Harry Potter: Soldier and Airman
by ElMarquis
Summary: After a rough four years undercover at Hogwarts on behalf of MI5, Harry comes away with a serpentine humanoid head on a pointy stick and a lingering belief that magical Britain is beyond help. But with skills and abilities beyond the norm, he decides to continue working on behalf of the British Government. Guns, fast jets, fast cars, mercenary attitudes, the odd romance. No slash.
1. Chapter 1

_A Pilot's Tale: This is a collection of my short 'Pilot's Tales' stories into one continuous story. Essentially it starts with a Harry whose universe began in 1975, and dropped out of the magical world in 1990 aged nearly fifteen with the head of Tom Riddle decorating a pike. I will be grabbing some scenes that I also wrote as one-shots and incorporated into 'A Soldier's Tale', such as the 'Blackhawk Down' scene._

 **Late 1992, Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria, Germany**

On the ground, many a person looked to the sky as, dancing high above their heads in an aerial ballet, two infamous aircraft once again tangled in the sky. Eliptical-winged, with a single cannon protruding from each wing, painted with white and black stripes on the fuselage and wings, the Supermarine Spitfire was instantly recognisable, as was its opponent, a Messerschmitt Bf-109.

Harry climbed hard, throttling back to not much above idle and as the aircraft began to stall, stood on one rudder pedal, brought it down to the horizontal while jamming the throttle open to where there was resistance, halfway up its travel. The fighter pirouetted around on the very edge of a stall, dancing onto the tail the '109. The Messerschmitt climbed hard, then suddenly half-rolled inverted and dived. Just as Harry prepared to follow, the German aircraft half-rolled again, pulled out of the dive and climbed.

It was too late for him, he was already in a following dive, the Messerschmitt was above him, once again rolling inverted and on the Spitfire's tail. Harry looked down at the throttle lever for a moment. There was a gate at halfway up it to stop him purposely going beyond half throttle. The reason for that was the four-thousand horsepower race-tuned engine up front. He slammed the throttle past the resistance and, already in a dive, accelerated away from the less powerful '109. Just as he was reaching the edge of the Messerschmitt's range, his headphones buzzed with a computerised voice.

" _Damaged, damaged, hit, one times type G three, rudder._ " said the electronic voice.

In the mock combat with electronic weapons, 'type G three' stood for a shell from the 109-G6 engine's motorkanone, a gun firing through the spinner. Harry cursed into his mask, panting with the strain. Hell, he'd just arrived back from the United States, having participated in several Red Flag exercises after training for nearly six months with the USAF Weapons School at Nellis, but even the fastest jets weren't as demanding to fly as an old piston fighter.

Snarling, the Rolls-Royce Merlin, pulled the Spitfire through a tight hundred-and-eighty degree turn. Harry spotted the 'bandit' high, climbing for a patch of cloud. The thin darting form of the '109 was a thousand feet above. He simply eased the nose up and was suddenly at a ninety-degree intercept with the underside of the Messerschmitt.

Leaning forward to glue his eye to the gunsight, he flicked off the safety catch for his guns and kept climbing towards the intercept with the '109. At nearly point blank range, with the '109 unaware, he led it with a couple of degrees of deflection and opened fire sending a stream of electronic bullets into the computer on the Messerschmitt.

" _Hit, hit, twenty-four type E two, eighty type E one, engine, pilot, fuel tank._ " the electronic voice stated, telling him that had they been loaded, the one-second burst would have put twenty-four Hispano 20mm shells and eighty .303 rounds into the '109.

" _Damn you Potter._ " the German cursed 'sportingly'.

Gunther Rall enjoyed these mock fights as much as anyone, but Harry had a nasty habit of pulling new tricks out of his hat. He was pretty certain that the Spitfire Mk. IX shouldn't have been able to simply bound away like it did. Over several weeks, they'd been flying in northern Germany, getting used to their aircraft, both of which were owned by the Potter Estate, but over time as they travelled south to the Austrian border and Bad Reichenhall, the Englishman had faithfully learnt and every time, their fights became closer and closer. This was the first he'd lost though...

Roaring over the remains of the old Jagdverband 44 airfield at Ainring, they circled in towards an airstrip and flying club from which they had taken off that morning, their first flight in the area after arrival. After a brief conversation with a man with a radio in a truck on the grass strip, Rall radioed Harry.

" _He wants us just to do a fast, low flyby, apparently to check there are no gliders in our path._ "

"Roger, descending to flight level zero-zero-zero point-two." Harry drawled.

He rolled inverted and dragged the stick back into his stomach, dropping towards the dark green of the Bavarian fields and forests like a homesick brick. The snarling Spitfire raced down the runway of the airstrip with the wind at about twenty-five feet, flat-out having pulled out of the dive at approaching five-hundred miles-an-hour.

Pulling up at the end of the runway, he climbed a thousand feet before once again rolling inverted. Pulling out of the dive at about a hundred feet with the flaps deployed and the engine throttled back, Harry lowered the undercarriage and gently brought his aircraft down onto the runway as Rall completed a second flyby, racing past the landing Spitfire flat out. As Harry taxied up to the parking area, he noticed a black BMW saloon pull up. General Galland had arrived.

* * *

 **1993, IAT, RAF Fairford, England**

"You ready?" Harry radioed.

" _The question is not am I ready, but are you certain you are old enough to see out of the windscreen?_ " was the slightly sarcastic reply.

"Or are you too old and arthritic to fly?" he countered.

He was circling about five miles south of RAF Fairford in a customised Supermarine Spitfire IX with a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine tuned to over four-thousand horsepower, intended to be raced at Reno. Flying in close formation with him was another of his aircraft, a Messerschmitt Bf-109 'mutant'. Built out of bits, it had the eighteen-hundred horsepower Daimler-Benz DB605 from a 'G-6' model, complete with a thirty-millimetre 'Motorkanone' firing through the spinner, a twenty-millimetre cannon in each wing and two thirteen-millimetre machine-guns on top of the cowling.

The pilot was an elderly gentleman, tall, well-built, with brushed-back hair under his flying helmet and the thinning remains of a masterwork of a moustache. Painted on the side of the cockpit was a cigar-smoking Mickey Mouse.

"Full power. Use your methanol-water injection." Harry ordered, levelling out the wings.

" _Jawohl_ _, Herr Potter._ "

"One." the two pilots in their aircraft opened up their throttles; "Two." the noses dipped and a stream of white smoke began to leave the Messerschmitt's exhausts, the vaporised water-methanol. "Three." from about fifty feet away from each-other, side-by-side, the two aircraft rolled inwards and the pilots pulled back on their sticks. Right in front of the crowds at Fairford, the two aircraft, turning, flew within feet of each-other.

* * *

Giving the throttle a last burst just to lift the aircraft very slightly, nearly neutralising the rate-of-descent, Harry eased it onto the tarmac gently, not eliciting even the slightest complaint from the tyres, just as _Generalleutnant_ Galland lowered his aircraft onto the tarmac five feet behind and twenty feet to the side of the Spitfire.

The crowd was silent. Even Air Vice Marshal Johnnie Johnson and _Generalleutnant_ Gunther Rall in the commentary box were silent. They'd just watched the ace and the man who was a child in comparison spend ten minutes idly ripping up most of the laws of physics and what you could and should do with an aircraft.

Taxiing past airliners, military transports, helicopters and jet fighters, everyone turned to watch the mutant Spitfire and 109 roll past, ungainly on their long legs, and yet reminding anyone watching that they could, at the pull of a few levers, become what had once been two of the most deadly weapons of war ever built.

Harry had locked open the canopy as soon as he'd entered the circuit, and as soon as he'd landed, extended the aerial for one of his radio systems up, out of the cockpit and tied a Jolly Roger flag to it.

Grinning as the pirate flag billowed in the prop-wash of the Merlin, he followed the RAF ground-crewman who was marshalling him into a space. Steering by easing the brake on the port wheel with the bike handle-like brake lever on the far side of the stick and the rudder pedals to direct it to the that wheel, he swung the aircraft around to port. Then the crewman crossed his arms, so he released the rudder pedal he was pressing on and applied the brakes fully.

Fuel cocks off, he pushed the throttle open fully, burning away all the fuel in the fuel lines as he turned off the magneto switches on the left side of the cockpit. Swiftly, the Merlin burnt through what was left and wound down, the swish of the propeller blades slowing and the ticking of cooling metal suddenly being the loudest noise in the cockpit.

Pushing back the canopy, he reached out as his fitter for the airshow weekend leapt up on the wing and handed him a bottle of chilled water. Gulping it down, he then reached up and peeled off his flying helmet and put it on top of the rear-view mirror on the outside of the windscreen edge, replacing it with a horribly misshapen and faded RAF peaked cap. It also looked like the top had been re-stitched at some point. Probably after he'd thrown it into an endurance-test version BAE Harrier's engine to see what condition it would come out in, and in what condition the engine would come out in.

Reaching out, Harry released the side door and, after twisting the release on his harness, dealt it a hefty blow, loosing all the various straps. Putting his hands on either side of the mirror, he pulled himself up to stand on his parachute. Stepping out onto the wing, he dropped onto the tarmac and climbed straight into the back of the Mercedes-Benz 600 'Grosser' which pulled up next to the aircraft.

Galland climbed in moments later, each silently reflecting on their flight as they were whisked off.

On the far side of a shower and a change of clothes, Harry dropped into an armchair in one of the main residential buildings on-base, waiting for his 'wingman' for the display weekend. A few minutes later, as he was flicking through a classic car magazine, the big German emerged from a room, wearing a very smart business suit.

"What on earth is that!?" he demanded.

Harry was wearing trainers, scruffy jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt.

"It's easier to blend in when you're not wearing the scruffiest RAF uniform ever to exist. Besides, I left my hat in the car." Harry replied with a smirk; "Come on, lets head back down to the flight-line."

Galland chuckled and stretched out a hand as, shaking Harry's hand firmly. It was an unspoken understanding between the two pilots, a strange form of comradeship. One young man who'd never had to kill in the sky, and one who had defended his country in the sky with every fibre of his being.

* * *

"-And I came in from five o'clock high, three hundred knots, he pushed the stick forward, I think instinctively, trying to out-dive me. I overshot him, turned and found that he'd pulled an Immelmann, he was behind me, above me." Harry described as he walked past a German Air Force C-130 with Galland.

"Between Erich and Gunther, it is hard to choose which of them is _the_ best of the '109 pilots." the German replied simply; "Other than Marseille, who could not be matched, it was a toss-up between the two to choose the better, I would not be confident to say which of the two was the best of those who remained."

Harry nodded slowly, he'd first visited Celle a year ago in the Spitfire, after his USAF Weapons School training. Flying to Berlin, and in need of fuel and food, he'd landed west of Berlin at Celle. His lunch had been interrupted by one of Galland's aces, Hans-Ekkehard Bob, who he had the distinct pleasure of calling a friend. After going to Berlin, he'd bagged several weeks of long-overdue leave and returned to Celle. Flying a variety of manoeuvrable light aircraft with various old fighter pilots, he'd learnt the pilot's trade, and after finishing putting together the Bf-109 earlier in the year, he'd flown mock-combats against a number of the veterans, with Hartmann and Rall being the most skilled of them.

"And we believed we were fighting for a new Holy Roman Empire, a great Germany which would lead the world to the technological and Communist-free future." he heard Gunther Rall, sat on the wingtip of the '109 saying; "We were young and deluded. Told that the Jewish people had controlled the surrender of Germany and Versailles, we wanted revenge on the world. A long time ago, but what our country did was unforgivable. 'Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die', never stop questioning yourself, your superiors and your juniors."

"Tennyson?" asked the young woman he was speaking to, a teenaged German if her accent was anything to go by; "I agree that you cannot commit a crime and then say it was 'under orders', but in the military, where you _are_ under direct control of a senior officer, what do you do?"

"In hindsight, shoot the person giving the orders." Rall stated.

"Morning Gunther." Harry greeted him, glancing between the Germans and wondering why they weren't speaking their own language as, with his usual level of paranoia, he checked the silver-blonde wasn't armed.

"Good morning Harry." he said amiably; "I thought that it would be rude to speak a foreign language

"I was wondering." Harry admitted before asking; "May I enquire who your friend is?"

"Ah yes, this is Miss Nadya Falke, she was one of the glider pilots and owners at Bad Reichenhall, we just were never around to meet." Rall answered after a moment.

"I watched you flying on a few occasions." she said, shaking his hand; "I'll admit it's something I aspire to... I bought and restored a glider about a year ago and spend every spare moment flying it."

"Then I'll make you more hell bent on meeting your aspirations, jump in." Harry told her, climbing onto the wing of the Spitfire.

"What. You're serious." she said, lifting her sunglasses to stare at him.

"Why does nobody around here take me seriously?" Harry wondered aloud; "Is it the t-shirt and jeans?"

"I believe, Herr Potter, it is due to the fact you still have spots." interrupted a smirking Rall.

Galland, who had perched himself on the trailing edge of the port wing of the '109, nearly fell off with laughter.

"Come on, I'd expected someone to jump at the opportunity to sit in the Spit." said Harry, ignoring the _other children_.

"Okay, you've persuaded me." Nadya laughed, climbing up on the wing and into the cockpit, standing on the parachute pack on the seat. Placing her hands on the edge of the windscreen, she slid herself in, feet on the rudder pedals.

"By the way you never introduced yourself." she noted, eyes running all over the aircraft's cockpit.

"Harry Potter." he introduced himself; "Though I have the misfortune to be something like Hadrian... oh I can't remember..."

"Don't worry, I'm cursed with the Christian name 'Karin-Nadya', so it could be worse." Nadya replied; "It's... small in here."

"Sometimes it feels like wearing an aeroplane." Harry laughed.

"How does it start?" she asked immediately.

"You turn on the battery master switch first." he replied, reaching into the cockpit and flicking the relevant switch; "Now the gauges are working, you press _this_ button to get the indicator for the undercarriage, showing you it's locked down. The handle to your left, you wind that forward so that the aeroplane steers right, because the engine makes it want to go left. Elevators are already set."

In quick succession, he pressed the undercarriage indicator switch, set the rudder trim.

"Now you can see in front of you a gauge with 'brakes' written on it. In the top-left corner, there's another reading which tells me that there's enough air to apply the brakes. The brakes are already locked on, so we pull up the fuel cock lever." Harry continued, reaching down to below the booster coil and starter switches and jammed the lever up and uncovered the switches. "These two switches on the left, I have to check they're off. Throttle, quarter of an inch open, propeller set and the idle cut off, which controls the fuel supply, is off. The next bit you'll need to do Nadya."

"What!" she exclaimed; "You're actually starting it?"

"Why not?" he countered; "Besides it's better to keep it warm for my next display."

"Okay."

"See the black lever with the ball on the top, just wobble that around, it pushes fuel around the aeroplane." Harry explained it simply, making sure he did as told. "Right, that's enough, I'll turn on these two switches over here, then you press the two buttons I uncovered, but hold back the stick all the time with your other hand. Let go of the two buttons as soon as I tap you on the shoulder."

"Prop clear!" shouted Rall, who had been listening from nearby.

The girl reached forward and, using two fingers, pressed the booster coil and starter switches. A slight whine was followed by two loud swishes as two of the four propeller blades swung past the windscreen. Then Harry jerked the throttle slightly, injecting slightly more petrol into the engine.

The Merlin caught, and with an earthshaking roar, came to life.

* * *

Harry sat in the cockpit, the engine ticking over as he stared at the expanse of metal filling his view. Directly in front of him were several feet of Rolls-Royce Merlin and a four-blade propeller idling at a bit under a thousand revolutions-per-minute, while beyond that, was PA474, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight's Avro Lancaster.

Reaching for his Thermos flask of coffee, he checked the engine temperature, pleased to see the two radiators were doing their job, cooling the engine sufficiently that he wasn't running any risk of overheating. The same probably couldn't be said for the veteran Battle of Britain Spitfire IIA sat behind him. He however had a less powerful, and therefore less stressed, engine unlike the customised Mk. IX. The same went for the Hawker Hurricane IIA at the back of the queue.

Taking a sip of his coffee, Harry sighed in contentment. The running joke at Stirling Lines was that his coffee was made with one teaspoon of boiling water and one jar of ground coffee.

" _Bravo-Bravo flight, take off in one minute intervals, enter circuit and orbit._ " radioed the controller; " _Lancaster, say one, Pirate, say two, Battle, say three and Hurricane, say five. Confirm._ "

" _Lancaster, Bravo-Bravo one, received loud and clear._ "

"Pirate, I copy, number two." Harry replied.

" _Battle, three confirmed._ "

" _Hurricane, four roger._ "

" _Bravo-Bravo flight, proceed to runway zero-nine-zero._ " came the next order from the controller.

Harry waited for the Lancaster to begin rolling forward before easing off his brakes and giving the throttle a slight poke with his index finger to increase the RPM of the propeller a few hundred rotations a minute. The Spitfire pulled away, with him using the wheel-brakes to weave left and right so he could see his path ahead of the immense engine.

The afternoon had a slight pall cast over it by an earlier incident. Literally. Two Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29 'Fulcrum' fighters had collided, resulting in one being cut in half and bursting into flames and the other being fatally damaged. Both pilots had banged out, but one aircraft had nearly impacted a number of parked aircraft.

Now, the sunset ceremony with the lowering of the RAF standard from the flagpole on the parade ground, with various units parading and the usual bigwigs taking the salute. The three aircraft of the BBMF and Harry's IX were rolling out to formate and perform flybys for the parade.

Turning on his stopwatch as the Lancaster eased on and off its brakes at the runway threshold, Harry eased on his own, placing himself where the Lancaster had been. Then the stopwatch buzzed and he opened the throttle fully, releasing the brakes. With the rudder trim set to counter torque-swing he still exercised the the rudder pedals a touch as the aircraft bounded forward, the throttle lever sliding to where it was jammed against the end of its travel.

Easing the stick forward, Harry felt rather than saw the tail come up, and then the speed of the air over the wings become sufficient that the weight came off the wheels. Smacking up the undercarriage lever, he kept the aircraft level at about twenty feet until he'd gathered sufficient speed. Reaching behind his head, he slammed shut the canopy of the Spitfire and followed in the direction that the Lancaster had flown.

Finding it flying circuits of the airfield, he eased the Spitfire in behind the Lancaster's tail, idly noticing that whoever was in the rear turret was tracking him with the horizontal movement of the turret and the vertical traverse of the quad Browning .303 light-machine guns.

"Bravo-Bravo One, Bravo-Bravo Two, do you mind me turning off my engine so that I may maintain your speed." Harry sarcastically requested over the radio.

" _Bravo-Bravo Two, Bravo-Bravo One, I somehow think that would be a colossally bad idea._ " came the reply from the Lancaster' radio operator.

Within a short time, the other aircraft had joined up with the formation and they simply circled, waiting from the signal of the ground-controller at the parade to perform the flyby.

" _Bravo-Bravo flight, form up and roll in, ETA sixty seconds._ "

The aircraft joined up, Harry on the starboard wing-tip of the Lancaster, with the Hurricane on the opposite side and the other Spitfire falling in the rear just below and behind the bomber's twin tailfins. They banked around to starboard and opened their throttles, entering a shallow dive. They had practised the previous day and Harry had a couple of white marker-pen marks on his airframe, one on the canopy showing where the dorsal turret of the Lancaster should be and one on the engine nacelle below where the nose turret should be, allowing him to triangulate his position.

Spotting the parade ground as he led the formation as starboard marker, Harry kept an eye on the altimeter and the Lancaster as they levelled out. His stopwatch and the growing parade ground in his gunsight showed that they were exactly on time. The burning orange ring on the gunsight were set so that the moment that they turned on direct course for the parade ground, it would fill the extremities of the ring. Then at ten seconds out when they'd pull out of the shallow dive, the parade ground would extend to the extremities horizontal and vertical lines which protruded from the ring. He already knew the approach speed, so he'd set the sight so that the top, bottom and sides of the ring and the crosshairs would be exactly filled by the parade ground at set times. It worked and they were perfectly on time.

Easing back on the stick as the edges of the crosshairs filled the parade ground, he checked the Lancaster's position, confirming it was in the right place. In his rear-view mirror, he saw the Red Arrows, as planned, rolling in, seven directly behind them, the remaining two joining the BBMF formation. Then suddenly as they roared over the parade ground, the Reds performed the 'Vixen Break', the seven behind them pulling around in a hundred-and-eighty degree fan.

Then the Spitfire flying rear marker pulled back, climbing vertically. Harry slammed his aircraft onto its port wing-tip and pulled back, turning ninety-degrees. He passed within feet of the Lancaster's tail as he flipped over onto the tip of his starboard wing. In a second, there was a roar and a flash of green and brown as the Hurricane turned on its starboard wing and pulled back. They roared away, the Lancaster flying straight on and the fighters fanning out.


	2. Chapter 2

**25th July 1993, International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford**

As was his wont, Harry was out of bed by zero-four-thirty and quickly started his day, cooking himself breakfast, going for a run around the perimeter track of the airfield, a distance of over ten miles. Returning to the mess, he showered, completed an intelligence report on the previous day's incident with the two MiGs which was immediately sealed in a file to be dispatched to wherever MI5 was, with some facilities already in place at Thames House.

After a second breakfast in the main mess dining hall, Harry was just contemplating what to do when a shout came over from the only other people in the room, the Red Arrows.

"Oi! Potter!" yelled one of the Reds.

"You bellowed?" Harry responded with a sardonically raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, we could do with your help." said one of the other Reds.

Harry slowly stood up, stretching slightly and yawning before walking over, making it clear he would do so in his own time. As one of the Reds opened his mouth, Harry shut him up with a raised hand, pouring himself a cup of coffee and taking a sip before lowering the hand.

"So." he said.

"Look, we've got a bit of a problem." said Thurley, the current Red Arrows CO; "We usually operate with nine pilots plus a ferry pilot who, in a pinch can take over as a Red, but we've just found Red Five and our ferry pilot have just got food poisoning. We either don't fly or we find another Hawk qualified pilot on-base, and right now, you're the only one we know of here."

"Don't be silly." Harry snorted; "As if I'd be able just to improvise for a formation display. That's what I always do when I display on my own or with one other person and then send the flight notes to the CAA and backdate it to the day before the display. They still haven't worked out that I never bother planning a display."

"I guessed that. But I still want you to give it a go, otherwise we're screwed. You're Hawk qualified, an experienced jet pilot with hundreds of hours on various combat types. We're going to head up to practise, if you can make the cut, we'll fly, if not... well, we're screwed." Thurley shrugged.

"Right... I'll give it a go, but I still think it's a stupid idea." Harry replied.

"We'll head through into briefing and memorise every move we fly." ordered the team leader.

* * *

In Red Five, Harry was flying right-marker for the first move they were practising, rolling in in a move where during the real display, red, white and blue smoke would be coming from their aircraft. Thurley was at the centre of the formation in Red One, with a shallow arrowhead of aircraft behind him.

" _Reds, diamond... three... two... one... go!_ " radioed Thurley.

Red Six, on the direct left of Thurley and Red Two throttled back for a moment, falling behind him and closing in on his tail. Red Seven on Red Six's left and Reds Three and Four pulled back for a line of three aircraft behind Red Six and Red Two. Red Eight and Harry in Five throttled back for a moment, pulling in behind Reds Seven, Three and Four, with Red Nine taking the rear of the formation.

" _Reds, half-loop... two... one... go!_ " was the next order.

They pulled back in a neat half-loop before, en-masse turning to port and diving, inverted into a half-roll to port, going onto the normal plane of flight and pulling up. The entire formation then rolled around the central axis onto their starboard wing-tips and flew past the location of their imaginary crowd, a big treeline.

" _Good job, that was first rate._ " Red One radioed; " _Formation two!_ "

They came around again in the opposite direction on their starboard wing-tips, presenting the upper side of their aircraft to the imaginary crowd. Reds Six, Two, Eight and Harry in Five stayed in a box formation behind Red One while Reds Seven and Three moved to the top of the formation and Reds Four and Nine moved to the bottom for a flyby of their 'Phoenix Bend' move.

" _And, bend!_ " called Thurley.

Harry pushed the stick forward in concert with the rest of the formation, flying along on their starboard wing-tips, pulling negative-G, pushing blood to their brains. Then after a second, they all pulled back for a hundred-and-eighty degree turn.

" _Perfect, keep it up_." Red One encouraged; " _Formation three... go!_ "

Harry didn't need to change positions for this move, they levelled the formation out, with Reds Seven and Nine moving in behind Reds Three and Four for the Chevron Roll.

" _Formation four... go!_ " came the next order as they reversed directions and came in from the opposite direction.

Red Two and Harry in Red Five moved in behind Red One in a three-aircraft line and Reds Seven and Three taking position just ahead of him and to his starboard, Reds Nine and Four doing the same to his port. They flew along on their starboard wing-tips, presenting the upside of their aircraft to the imaginary crowd. Then they pulled up as they rolled to port, eventually entering a shallow inverted dive that led into another ninety-degree turn and ninety-degree roll to port.

" _Not bad. Formation Five... go!_ "

* * *

Harry sank into the chair in the briefing room as they reviewed the tapes of the practise display from the onboard cameras and an observing RAF aircraft. He was tired, the moves had become progressively harder. It was one thing 'fighting' a one-on-one aerial duel against a pensioner, but a formation display where he had to have every move memorised and where crashing into your other teammates was frowned upon was exhausting.

"Right... looks like we are a go." commented Thurley after a vote among the pilots, apparently unanimously in favour.

"I don't know whether to thank you or kill you." Harry commented.

"Well, we should get to the flight-line, display commences in twenty." said Red Three, glancing at his watch.

"Fuckery." cursed Harry; "I'm opening the display, forgive me if I do a runner."

A few minutes later, covered in churned up mud and grass, his Aston Martin V8 Vantage X-Pack roared up between the Messerschmitt and the Spitfire. Harry switched off the seven-litre engine and, snatching his parachute pack off the wing, quickly began preparing for his first display of the day.

"Overslept?" said an amused-sounding voice.

"Oh, hey Nadya." Harry replied, turning to see the young woman leaning on the metal barrier just a few feet away; "I'd say not overslept, just too busy. I've been on the go since about five AM. Anyway, how're you doing?" he asked.

"Not bad at all, a wonderful opportunity to get away... from it all." Nadya commented, hesitating for a moment before changing whatever she was going to say.

Harry nodded as he finished doing up the straps on his parachute over the bulky anti-G suit on his lower body before pulling on his leather flying helmet.

"I can't agree more but you'll have to forgive me, I've got an airshow to open." he commented, before opening the aircraft up and sliding into the cockpit.

* * *

Unfortunately, during the display, the Spitfire's starter somehow got screwed up, forcing Harry to abort the display before the minimal range of the Spitfire prevented him getting the aircraft to somewhere that he could repair it in his own time. With grey smoke leaving the exhausts from the starter motor chewing itself into a collection of bits of metal inside the most fragile part of the aircraft after the pink, fleshy thing behind the controls, he radioed a minor emergency and pulled away, jamming open the throttle for a one-hundred mile sprint to his personal base, Ravenscroft Manor.

With the starter motor having punctured the forward fuel tank with shrapnel, there would have been a risk of fire had Harry not replaced the fuel there with water-methanol for his own cooling injectors. However, the substance was still spraying all over the engine and boiling, coming out of every panel gap in bursts of steam. Visibility was not good, but a GPS and an old-fashioned map and pencil assured him he was on course,

The sprawling medieval manor, similar in appearance to Knole House that came into view down below his starboard wing, had a long, wide, flat and dead-straight driveway which he'd had paved with smooth tarmac and regularly used it as a runway. Harry circled in, lowering his air speed as he deployed the flaps and undercarriage. The engine temperature was lower than was healthy due to the cooling effect of the water methanol, so if he screwed up the landing, he wouldn't get a second chance at going around and landing because the fuel would stop igniting and he'd have a glider. Easing the Spitfire down, Harry feathered the propeller and killed the engine immediately, not wanting to damage it any more than absolutely necessary with bits of chewed starter motor being thrown around. Rolls-Royce Merlin 130s were rarer than hen's teeth, the only stock of them being his own.

Guiding it in with the rudder-pedal actuated brakes, Harry allowed the aircraft's momentum to fall as the Spitfire taxied up the side of Ravenscroft manor to where there were half-a-dozen small fabric hangars. Undoing his parachute as soon as he taxied up in front of one of the hangars, Harry threw off the leather flying helmet and chucked himself out of the cockpit and dashed for the one slightly further down the line, where one of his usual transports was sat, ready to go.

Demand for him to perform missions which would be made easier by magic meant that he had to be moving around the world far more, so he'd acquired a couple of very fast jets to do the job. The one that was in readiness was a classic F-100D Super Sabre, a single-seat quad-cannon missile-carrying fighter. The original engine had been a Pratt and Whitney J57, but he'd found another engine of identical length and only slight increased diameter. It was fitted with a brand new Volvo RM8 jet engine from Sweden, a far more powerful and somewhat more efficient engine.

Pulling himself up the side of the aircraft, Harry reached into the cockpit, which was already open picked up his bone-dome flying helmet from the seat and slid onto the ejector seat and strapped himself in. With a number of his missions involving hostile territory, old abandoned airbases and angry people trying to kill him, whatever aircraft he was using was always armed. Two-hundred and seventy-five shells loaded into each of the five-chamber revolver cannons, four AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles under the wings, modern, effective air-to-air heat-seeking weapons, not the near-useless Vietnam-era weapons which had a one-third chance of taking out an enemy, a one third chance of failing to launch or lock on, or finally a third chance that it would shoot either yourself or a friendly plane down. The F-100 'Hun' was painted in a gloss black paint scheme with a red cheatline down the side to the blue and red RAF roundels. And the name 'Attila the Hun' painted on the nose.

Otherwise known by him as 'The Bastard' for some of its more murderous flying characteristics.

Harry was soon strapped to the ejector seat which he'd armed, removing the pins and stowing them. He swiftly pulled on the 'bone dome' helmet, plugged in his oxygen, radio gear and anti-G suit before starting the aircraft up. All the armament switches were off or safetied, but most of the other checks were done the morning before he left for Fairford.

Within minutes, the RM8 turbojet was running up, and as soon as it was at the right temperature, Harry released the brakes and taxied The Hun to the end of the runway. Full power applied and the aircraft rocketed forward. Then he added another twelve-thousand pounds of thrust by lighting the afterburner.

Grabbing up the undercarriage the moment that he became airborne, Harry stuffed the nose down. He loved flying the Super Sabre, but really didn't like landing or taking off in the aeroplane which had a murderous stall characteristic called the 'Sabre Dance', and also otherwise known as 'plummet and burn'.

So he gathered as much speed as the length of the runway allowed before pulling up and cutting the afterburner so not to blast the runway surface into oblivion with the scorching heat and immense blast of the 'burner. He pressed the push-to-talk and began making radio contact with area control.

* * *

The Reds were stood around their aircraft, watching the sky anxiously. The last they'd seen of their temporary team member was him coming out of a high-G flat turn with some rather nasty shades of smoke streaming from the engine of his beloved Supermarine Spitfire. There was a 'Pan Pan' call before the Spitfire had buggered off at full-throttle. And they had less than three-quarters of an hour until their display.

"Chief!" called one of the ground crew, attracting the attention of Thurley; "Just had a call from the tower, radar and radio says Red Five's coming in, and fast. He's come from south-east of London and apparently has stuck rigidly to a speed of six-sixty knots, which given today's air temperature and air water-content is just below the speed of sound."

"Sounds about right." commented Red Nine.

"What d'you mean?" asked Thurley.

"I've seen the kid running about in a variety of very potent but obsolete fast jets." Red Nine; "Collecting them seems to be a hobby of his, I saw him lob into RAF Valley last year in a Saab Draken."

"Well I don't care if he comes in the Starship Enterprise itself as long as he gets here." Red Two offered.

"Agreed." nodded Thurley; "Someone send a Land Rover to get him over here the moment his engine is off."

Harry slipped in behind a Swiss Hawker Hunter in the circuit, making sure that his circuits of the airfield were wider because he had to avoid overtaking the Swiss while going fast enough to avoid the Sabre's horrible and inevitably fatal stall. Eventually, the runway was clear and, appropriately paranoid, he lowered the aircraft towards the runway, simultaneously deploying the air-brake and full non-afterburning power as an insurance policy.

The stall warning lights flashed up, so Harry swiftly closed the air-brake and undercarriage before jamming the reheat on full to pull away for another circuit. On attempt two, he managed a shallow enough approach at high speed and jammed on the air-brake and deployed the brake chute moments before the wheels hit the runway. Taking a deep breath of relief, Harry held the nose wheel up to bleed off speed as much as possible by increasing the frontal area until the nose sank down onto the gear leg.

" _Hun, this is tower, alright there?_ " asked the controller.

"Sometimes I hate this bastard of an aeroplane." Harry cursed over the radio; "I'll head over to where I had my Spit parked, can you dispatch a towing tractor and someone to wrap up my brake 'chute."

" _Wilco._ "

Harry taxied up to the stand where the Spitfire had been, noting that the '109 was moved further over to give the Super Sabre enough room, it being about twenty feet longer, six feet wider and three feet taller. Manoeuvring in carefully, Harry stood on the starboard brake and letting a tiny burst of throttle to swing the jet around to face out towards the taxiway. Slamming open the air-brakes and locking the wheel brakes, he quickly began to shut down the aircraft.

Pushing open the cockpit canopy, he was just releasing his harness and about to drop down from the cockpit onto the concrete when someone hooked an F-100 ladder over the side of the cockpit, allowing him to get down without risking spraining a muscle or something more grievous.

"You're lucky we still had one of these kicking around bud." drawled a Yank, standing by an open-top Land Rover which had a an RAF Red Arrows 'Blue' erk sat in the driver's seat.

"Thanks mate, I owe you a pint." Harry replied, patting the American on the shoulder as he climbed into the Land Rover.

"What happened with the Spitfire, Flight?" asked the Red Arrows engineer; "And why didn't you come straight down?"

"Starter motor gave in and punctured the forward fuel tank which nowadays I don't use for petrol but water-methanol coolant. I couldn't just bring it down here because I wouldn't be able to start it again without a significant dismantling of the engine to get at the back, for which I have the tools at home, where I flew it." Harry replied, unscrewing the adapters on the end of his oxygen tube and radio cables that allowed him to use them with the old and American Super Sabre; "The leak kept the temperature low enough that I was able to fly on emergency power the whole way."

"Excellent. The team have a flight-line briefing to do as soon as you arrive, then a mug of tea and a sarny before you head up." the engineer explained as they pulled to a halt in a cluster of bright red BAE Hawks.

"Shame I've got to downgrade to such a low-powered aircraft." Harry sniped as he slid out of the Land Rover.


	3. Chapter 3

**25th July 1993, International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford**

Dropping from the cockpit of his Hawk, Harry patted the wing, glad that both he and the aircraft had pulled through one of the most challenging things he'd ever done. Killing Tom Riddle had been irritating, the Gulf War unpleasantly hot, but he'd only had an audience of three other SAS troopers during the latter and a load of soon-to-be-dead Death Eaters in the former. With tens of thousands watching to make sure one poor unprepared sod didn't screw it all up... Breathing a sigh of relief, he peeled off his helmet as Thurley walked over.

"Not bad. And Potter... mind if we call you up if we need an emergency extra pilot?" asked Red One, offering a Red Arrows flying suit patch.

"Sure." Harry grinned, taking the patch and pulling a pen out of a pocket on the sleeve of his flying suit and a notepad; "This will get you to someone who will have a way to contact me at all times. If I can get to wherever you are in time and am not busy doing the will of Her Majesty's Government."

They shook hands before Harry hitched a ride in the same Land Rover to the catering area of the show ground. He quickly affixed the Red Arrows patch to an empty velcro patch on the arm of his flying suit before sliding out onto the grass and making a beeline for the beer tent, hand drifting to a bulky pocket which contained a Heckler and Koch P9 compact semi-automatic pistol as someone fell into step next to him, deliberately.

"Morning Harry!" said Andrew 'Jock' McCabe, a seven-year SAS veteran and Sergeant, as well as the Senior NCO of 'Section Five', the four-man unit of special operators Harry ran. He was a mammoth Glaswegian with an odd sense of humour and a long, jagged scar crossing his close-cut hair, caused by an IRA shrapnel grenade.

"Just about still morning." Harry replied, glancing at his watch; "I was just contemplating shooting you."

"The highest form of complement from you." Jock said before they approached the bar, two of the three barmen being free to serve, the one at the far left end of the bar and the far right, causing the two to separate.

Harry had just taken his first sip of his pint of beer when he turned to walk away when he nearly bumped into the person who had been ordering from the first barman.

"We're meeting too often to write it off as coincidence Nadya." he smirked as the blonde glanced up at his face.

"Looking that way." she laughed before rattling off; "I heard you were flying with The Arrows, which aircraft and what was it like?"

"I was Red Five, the aircraft on the far starboard of the formation when we entered the show." Harry replied, taking another sip of his beer and sighing in satisfaction; "Ah, that's wonderful, now I cannot fly no matter what anyone says. And you want to know what it was like? Imagine the second or third most intense experience of your life outside sex, then add a crowd of several tens of thousands and a load of foreign military guys, as well as eight other aircraft to crash into, not just the earth itself."

After blushing at his blunt comment about sex, Nadya winced as she imagined the pressure. Harry was too busy glaring daggers at Jock who had just mouthed 'Hot Stuff' at him over his conversation partner's shoulder.

"Maybe I should rethink my plans to join the Luftwaffe then." she commented.

"Don't let me put you off it." Harry advised; "Besides, again I'll be blunt, how old are you?"

"About thirteen-ish, maybe more. My records were lost with the fall of the Wall." Nadya replied.

Harry realised she must have been born in East Germany, and it sounded like there was no immediate family around. Curious, but not for him to poke into.

"You'll be in, what... gymnasium?"

"Yes, I got into Primary in '85, when I was probably five, a year early. Then I skipped a year, walked the exams and spent my spare time learning English before going to Gymnasium in late '87, two years younger than anyone else. I've got another three years until I graduate. It was there that I managed to acquire a glider and restore it." she said.

"Not bad. I actually dropped out of school aged fifteen, back in summer 1990. Then I got a job and crammed whenever I could and got GCSEs in History, Geography, Maths, German, French, Arabic, two English subjects. I kept up my language fluency and added Russian to the three languages I could already speak for my A-Levels which I took last month." Harry said, smirking, knowing that generally people didn't realise how old he wasn't.

"What! You're only what... eighteen?" Nadya said, suddenly putting the pieces together.

"Not for another six days." he shrugged; "But I nearly had to wait another year because of when in the Academic Year I was born, but I pulled some strings."

"How the hell did you get into the Air Force then?" demanded Nadya.

"Trade secret m'dear." Harry said, putting on a slightly pukka tone.

"Please?" Nadya said, smirking before putting on a pleading expression.

"Work hard, get whatever your end-of-school qualifications are... maybe attend a university. I know in Britain, generally Cranfield or Oxford and Cambridge are the best ones for feeding into the RAF, though it depends what you want to do." Harry shrugged.

"If I said I wanted to be a pilot?" asked Nadya.

"Then I'd say you'd have one hell of a job getting past the bigoted sexism in the armed forces, but good luck." he said, turning a piercing look on her; "You've got years yet... I don't recommend taking my route into the armed forces as it nearly burned me out, just get your qualifications, maybe even get civilian flying qualifications and don't take any crap from anyone. So far, I've heard that there are several women training in the RAF for pilot positions. The Canadians, the Nords, even the Yanks are also training female pilots. Yet I do not know of anyone in Continental Europe doing so, even the Germans."

"Then I will either earn such a position, or wait until another sets the precedent and allows more women to do so." said Nadya, after mulling over his comment for a moment; "What happened earlier, I saw you come in with that Super Sabre, you nearly landed and then piled on the power and went around."

"I felt the aircraft beginning to stall, and with a Super Sabre, if you stall, the nose will pitch up violently, so I applied absolute full throttle and reduced all the drag to get out of that position." Harry explained, turning as a hand clapped him on a shoulder.

"Well Harry, I'm off to go and buy some of the useless shit that the tents here sell." Jock commented; "I need to speak to you on an operational matter sometime in the next few days."

"My military career is on hold until six-thirty AM on Wednesday the twenty-eighth. Until then Jock, I couldn't give a flying monkey's." Harry stated, not even looking up.

Jock let loose a barking laugh before wandering off.

"As I was saying..." Harry began before realising that he'd forgotten what he was saying; "Actually, does the Luftwaffe have a cadet corps, like the Royal Air Force Air Training Corps, because over here, they're usually a fairly good way to get into the armed forces as long as you don't fall for the airline cadet-ships which demand you sign over your soul."

"Looked into that and the Bundeswehr doesn't have such a think... to reminiscent of the Hitler Youth I think." she replied.

"Then, essentially what you've got to do with recruiters and the people who choose where you go to is to get them to think 'Why wouldn't we recruit this person'. Rack up some flying time, qualifications, have enough reasons to recruit you to bury the recruiters." Harry finished.

"I'll have to keep you around for advice." said Nadya playfully.

"Unfortunately I'm regularly on overseas deployments, this is the first time I've been back in the country for a while." Harry stated, putting his beer down on a table as he reached for his notepad and pen again; "But while I'm not regularly contactable, I've got a number for someone who should be able to get hold of me. If you ever need some advice, help or just a job reference... call me. Anyway, want to have a look around the flight-line?"

"Sure." she replied, taking the slip of paper torn from his notepad and slipping her arm through his.


	4. Chapter 4

**Wednesday 28th July 1993, the Western Isles of Scotland**

Harry glanced up as a Westland Gazelle helicopter circled, and quietly cursed. He had managed to find through a great deal of searching a wonderful hiding spot in a bay off the uninhabited island of Oronsay in the Western Isles, and was annoyed that someone had tracked him down. It was zero-six hundred hours, bitterly cold and he still had half-an-hour before he had to get into his own Gazelle and head for Stirling Lines.

The small bay was not exactly inactive, with a ramp up to a large boathouse running alongside a jetty, at which was moored one of six Soloven Class fast patrol boats that he had, four of the other five being in the boathouse. Where he was perched was the bridge of a far larger vessel, moored out in the deeper water of the bay, the former USS Newport News, a Des Moines Class heavy cruiser, one of three remaining he had his eye on. If the museum ship attempts failed and a ship he was interested in was sold for scrap, he'd swoop in and gain custody of the ship, usually making people believe it had been scrapped. This was the first and there were two more, the USS Des Moines itself and the USS Salem.

Glaring at the circling helicopter, Harry contemplated whether it was worth the bother of shooting it out of the sky as it finished another circuit. Eventually, he reached for a flare pistol that was resting on the ledge next to him, broke it open and loaded two red flares before walking out onto the starboard bridge wing of the Admiral's Bridge. He waited until the Gazelle was overhead again before firing a red flare.

Completely ignoring the flare, the Gazelle circled again before easing itself down onto the stern of the ship. Harry glared, grabbed his favourite rifle for combat, an SR-25 designated marksman's rifle which he doubled over as a battle rifle. Racing down an internal staircase to the captain's bridge and onto the bridge wing, he headed down several flights of metal staircases and onto the main deck. Sliding a magazine of 7.62 NATO rounds into the housing of the rifle, Harry made use of all the protrusions from the deck as cover for his advance on the helicopter.

"Oi! Harry! You do realise that the holiday's over?" blared a voice over a megaphone as Harry slid between the lowest, rearmost point of the superstructure and the rear triple eight-inch turret.

"Jock you idiot! I was contemplating blowing you out of the sky!" Harry bellowed back; "Anyway, I've still got half an hour of leave left and I was going to make use of it."

He actually had been intending on abusing the Timeturner he'd 'acquired' during his third year and getting some more work on the heavy cruiser done. A full modern control suite had been added to the lower captain's bridge, though little of it was connected up in the little time he'd been working on it. So far, the hydraulic control of the rudder was connected, the various instruments to give readings of the turbines and control the feed of steam to them were connected, allowing throttle, and finally, the controls for the feed of oil into the furnaces for the boilers.

"I was actually going to inform you that due to a dearth of missions, you've got another week off." said Jock; "Want a hand with whatever you're doing while you explain how the hell you've got hold of this?"

"Okay, just drop out of the bird, and prove you're who you say you are." Harry replied, maintaining a healthy level of paranoia.

* * *

By the time the week was up, the living quarters behind the bridges were up to a quite English level of luxury, the Gazelle having been going back and forth from various places with a net hanging from the underside carrying about half a ton in addition to what could be carried in the back of the helicopter. Jock had demanded the incorporation of a suitable kitchen in the bridge complex, not wanting to use the massive galley. Harry had obliged, and in a slightly sarcastic mood, he'd put in a real farmhouse kitchen with stone flagging, a pine table, AGA cooker, red and white patterned curtains. Jock had retaliated by reversing several of the locks on the doors so that when Harry tried opening them, he sealed them shut.

After a truce, they settled down to working quietly, the motors for turret direction and gun elevation on the eight and five inch guns were also now controlled from what was essentially sets of protractors mounted on the control systems table, and basic mathematics would calculate an elevation needed for a shot, not that they intended on using it for that... yet. Jock had been designing an auto-loading system for the big guns, but that was still quite a way out.

Harry had used magic to strip much of the paint from the interior, repair any damage underneath including rust before reapplying the paint, having transfigured buckets full of flakes of old paint into the liquid. and their time was up and they needed to get back to base. Unfortunately, two things stopped the arrival of a heavy cruiser at their base, Hereford was landlocked and the bunkers of the former USS Newport News didn't have much oil in them.

They were just closing up the ship and Harry reapplying a vast array of security charms and preservation wards when his phone rang with a call from MI5, requesting he report on behalf of Section Five to the British Embassy in Washington. So a day later, Andrews Air Force Base was recipient of a former Fleet Air Arm F-4K Phantom 'Popeye the Sailor'.

* * *

 **5th August 1993**

Harry settled into an armchair in the office of the Her Majesty's Ambassador to the United States of America, dressed in jeans, combat boots and a loose but smart button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing the fact he had a knife strapped to his left forearm. Behind him, Jock simply leaned against the wall, dressed in forest camouflage, pretending he wasn't annoyed at his younger colleague for some rather adventurous aerobatics on the last leg of the journey from a refuelling tanker to Andrews when he'd realised there was fuel to burn in the Phantom.

"Gentlemen, come in." said the ambassador's voice outside just as Harry was contemplating blowing something up out of impatience, swearing he'd actually heard Jock growl in annoyance during their half-an-hour wait.

Harry and Jock simultaneously narrowed their eyes as two men stepped in. Major General William Garrison, the JSOC premier and the man known simply as the 'Eagle', the CO of Delta Force.

"Ambassador, if you'd mind staying outside, this discussion is beyond your clearance level." Harry drawled as Jock stared pointedly at the door.

"Of course." replied the ambassador, closing the door.

"Is this room secure?" demanded Eagle.

"Swept three times a day for bugs, sanitized twice daily and with electronic signal jamming. Yes, it's secure." Jock responded, having read through the security procedures during the wait.

"Right, I'll get down to business." Garrison took over; "You may have heard recently that there was a fatal bombing of a US military vehicle in Somalia, we've identified the culprit and have deployed a task force to hunt him down. However, during the Gulf War, a unit made up of you two and another two men achieved far greater successes in hunting down SCUD missiles than any of our own units. The President has authorised me to request your deployment to Somalia as a part of the manhunt."

"I was getting bored anyway." shrugged Jock when Harry cast him a glance.

"My price is steep." Harry said, returning his gaze to the JSOC premier.

"Name it." replied Garrison, producing a notepad and pen.

"I got here quickly enough because I have an old fast jet, but I was only able to get the air-to-air refuelling necessary because the aircraft were transiting between the UK and the US, along with someone owing me a favour." Harry explained before presenting his demands; "If I am to cooperate more closely with America, I need facilities for refuelling, the care of my aircraft, as well as being allowed to set up a safe house in the States, with the allowance at the highest level to acquire, bear and move arms."

The last was more an insurance against anyone getting too het up if his little heavy cruiser smuggling operation was discovered, though there were a few bits of weaponry he could do with getting hold of, as well as quite a lot of surplus he had lying around the manor which he could sell on the American civilian market for a fair price.

"Agreed." said Garrison immediately; "I'll hand you over to Eagle to brief you in detail."


	5. Chapter 5

**October 1993, Mogadishu, Somalia**

Harry grimaced. The ground extraction team for the Delta Force attackers was being held up by roadblocks, and across the city, megaphones were blaring, calling people out to defend their homes against the 'invaders'.

"Utter fuckers!" Harry barked irritably.

He could see four people on a tower holding megaphones. Allowing them to continue their calls was doing more harm than gain by keeping their presence secret. He checked the magazine of his rifle, flicked off the safety catch and lined up his first shot. The crosshairs of his Schmidt and Bender scope landed on the head of the first target. He squeezed the trigger, the gun jumping slightly in his arms. Quickly, he cycled the bolt. In rapid order, Harry had gunned down all four. Unfortunately, there were still other voices blaring through megaphones out of sight and out of range.

It was his shift on watch in the window SAS troop's Mogadishu safe house. The one eighteen-year old wizard had been on watch, observing the Olympic Hotel where a wanted war criminal was staying. He was also providing fire cover for the assault force of Deltas and Rangers with a stealthy Accuracy International Arctic Warfare Suppressed.

He'd just spotted the Somali militia pouring out of their rat holes, clutching assault rifles, the odd old Lee-Enfield, and more worryingly, light machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. He pretty much had one eye glued to the Schmidt and Bender scope, shifting about on the shooting rest on which he was lying prone. Squeezing the trigger again, Harry picked off another one of the rocketeers with a shot to the left-hand side of the chest. He quickly drove home a fresh magazine and moved on, gunning them down as quickly as he could, as the burly corporal next to him reloaded the magazines as fast as he could, sliding .308 Winchester subsonic bullets into the magazines from a case of the bullets sat next to him and placing the reloaded magazines next to Harry.

The light crack, no louder than a .22 long rifle shot sounded again and again. Harry fired, a well-aimed bullet punctured the warhead attached to the end of an RPG. The round detonated the warhead, blowing apart its bearer. He could not afford to sympathise, he'd seen the damage these did to British armoured-personnel carriers in Ireland, and heard about their use both by and against the Soviets in Afghanistan. And the tales were never pretty.

"This is Section Five, I say again this is Section Five, abort the mission, shoulder-launched projectiles are deployed, I say again, rocket propelled grenades." Sergeant Jock McCabe growled, he was dialling up the Ranger Force on his radio in the corner of the safe house.

Harry cycled the bolt, ejecting a spent cartridge onto the pile next to him and chambering another. The Blackhawks were overhead, their rotors noisily rattling away at the air. Sitting ducks, and he could do nothing more than try and protect them from the militia. Then, between shots Harry raised his head to watch the helicopters, and could only watch in silent horror as one of the assault force Rangers lost his grip and fell from the rope slung from a Blackhawk helicopter. Another man slid down the rope, successfully, and he was quickly followed by several more.

" _This is assault force six-seven, we have a casualty, serious, he needs evacuation._ " the radio crackled.

" _Assault force six-seven, this is column callsign Patriot, we are making our way to your location under heavy small arms fire._ " was the reply from someone else.

Then seconds later, the city came alive with gunfire, all targeting the the column of Humvees. Harry squeezed off another shot, taking out a rocketeer before turning to face the vehicle column. He cycled the bolt and quickly set the zeroing of the scope for the location he could see dozens of militiamen. They were clustered in every doorway, in the mouth of every alley, emerging from their holes like vicious rats.

The Humvees had been parked down the road which lay by the side of the Olympic Hotel, and then as they pulled out to the front to extract the fallen Ranger, it seemed like every single gun and rocket in the city focused on them. He could see sparks as bullets smacked into the armour, and winced as rockets bounced off the sides of the vehicles and detonated, denting the cars and firing shrapnel in every direction.

However, an upside was that with gunfire flickering in every window, every alleyway and every doorway, Harry could barely miss, they were so massed. Even just standing in great masses in the roads. Unfortunately, there were no aerial assets in the area which could be tasked to perform precision strikes in the city. Despite the massed enemies, harry still picked his shots, taking out those who seemed to be coordinating the fight, along with anyone carrying an RPG.

Jettisoning a magazine, he held out his hand and was straight-away handed another. They had dozens of two-hundred and fifty round BAE Royal Ordnance boxes of 7.62 NATO ammunition stacked in the corner, and all of their weapons except their sidearms used the cartridges, meaning they didn't need any other kind.

Silently, Private Jack Knight was watching through a spotter's scope, scribbling a tally of kills in a notebook. Usually, he acted as spotter, but there was no need here as Harry closed the bolt and squeezed the trigger. He and Jock took fifteen-minute shifts with the rifle, treating anyone with an ex-Soviet weapon as an enemy.

" _Patriot column has extracted to base with the casualty. One soldier dead._ " was the sobering news over the radio a little while later.

"Could be worse. They're not dying in a hail of rockets. Yet." Jock shrugged as Harry lay down prone behind the rifle, sweeping the expended cartridges into a plastic bag to clear himself some more room.

"Don't jinx it." Harry joked before lowering his eye to the scope.

Then he spotted the smoky trail of a rocket going straight up from the ground into the air. Focusing on one end of it, he was able to see the rear of a head behind a building. Focusing hard on his target's head, he took a quick glance at a flag on top of the hotel. Completely limp, no wind. Harry fired. The shot missed the building, but hit the target dead on. Then he glanced up and froze. God damn it to hell!

Super Six-One was spiralling downward, trailing smoke. It struck the ground, not exploding, but a sheet of flame followed it down. Harry narrowed his eyes. He never let emotion into his work, but that didn't mean that retribution was out. Cycling the bolt, he shot the nearest militiaman, methodically working his way through a hundred rounds in ten minutes, and working his way through a hundred of the AK-armed fighters on the streets.

Jock had broken out another rifle and fitted one of the spare suppressors and special barrels for the Arctic Warfare Suppressed, joining their silent onslaught. Harry had spent hundreds of hours practising his marksmanship at far longer ranges. When he'd been recruited by MI5 after his second year at Hogwarts, they'd recognised that he was capable of being an ice-cold killer. He'd not so much as thrown up after killing Quirrell. Deprived of a normal childhood, he had only a fairly loose grip on normal morality. To him it was 'Thou shalt not kill unless it is unavoidable'.

And right now, he didn't give a shit about Dumbledorean forgiveness.

The militia had already brought down another Blackhawk in late September, and they'd just shot down a second. Harry had taken down another rocketeer with a well-placed chest shot as a maniac Littlebird gunship zoomed in at high speed, blazing away with a pair of M134 miniguns. The spray of bullets was visible even in the bright sunlight.

Suddenly, it flipped around, and losing speed dramatically, sank down to the earth near the crash site. At first thinking it had been crash-landed, Harry realised that he'd seen it take no hits... they had deliberately landed near the crashed Blackhawk. But still, in twenty seconds everything had gone to hell.

He concentrated his efforts on defending the two helicopters, gunning down militiamen like a person demented. Private Knight had long-since stopped taking tallies, and was assisting sweeping the expended cartridges out of the snipers' ways and reloading their magazines.

The Littlebird lifted off after five minutes of gunfire, tense radio messages and more gunfire. The steady rate of fire set in the safe house wasn't let up. A Pavehawk Combat Search and Rescue helicopter, Super Six-Eight came into the hover over the crash-site, despite the SAS once again radioing for them to abort and get out.

Despite the ferocious firefight fought on the ground between the Delta Force operators who had been dropped in by Littlebirds and those Rangers who had managed to get in and stay in safely, neither side was making much in the way of gains. A rocket spiralled upwards and exploded near the Pavehawk after it had disgorged a team. The helicopter veered away, trailing smoke, but stayed in the air.

Harry grimaced. The mission was going from bad to worse. Another rocket launched ten minutes later took out Blackhawk Super Six-Four, and another Blackhawk, Super Six-Two took an RPG while in the hover over Six-Four's crash site. So far two Hawks were damaged and had to leave the combat zone, and two were destroyed. Honestly what he would give for his personal plane, a Supermarine Spitfire IX with four infantry-calibre machine-guns and two twenty-millimetre cannon, as well as a four-hundred mile-an-hour top speed.

"Wolf! We're compromised. Enemy sniper, five-story building in your ten o'clock." barked Jock who was at a different window with a different angle.

Harry silently took the shot, taking out the SVD armed insurgent before standing up. He swept aside the expended rounds, loaded in a fresh magazine before slinging the rifle around his back and clipping the harness to his body-armour. Already, he could see people advancing towards their building.

"Jock, keep shooting. Jack, get all the belts of 7.62, and stack any ammunition we can't carry with some explosives." Harry ordered swiftly; "Bill, as many magazines as we can carry."

Bill, the quiet Old Etonian corporal nodded. He quickly loaded all of the magazines for their sniper rifles and put them in a series of backpacks with several belts of 7.62. Each of them shouldered the packs and picked up their respective battle rifles, an SR-25, an StG58 FAL and two M14s. Each of the four grabbed some of the remaining belts of 7.62 ammunition, meant for Jack's FN MAG but which could be broken out and loaded into the magazines of their rifles. Taking out one bullet allowed them to clip several belts together and loop them around their torsos, and with a backpack with more ammunition in it, they had over a thousand rounds.

The door started shuddering as Jock quickly put his Arctic Warfare rifle around his back and picked up his battle rifle. They glanced at each-other, and Harry produced a grenade. Moving to the back entrance, Harry tossed the grenade into the pile of ammunition they weren't able to carry just as Jack's belt-fed machine-gun chattered loudly, tearing through the flimsy dry-wood door.

After a few seconds he followed the others down the back steps. The front door to their safe house burst open and militiamen poured in just seconds before the building blew up spectacularly, taking all the munitions they couldn't carry with it, as well as their attackers.

"That's done." Harry stated with the slightest hint of smugness.

He was acutely aware that the closest friendly forces were at Super Six-One. He'd seen Chalk One, a helicopter, drop in Delta Force operators onto the site. They had to fight about half-a-kilometre.

Running through the filth-ridden dusty alleyways, the SAS troop cut down militiamen in hails of automatic gunfire, taking no prisoners, showing no quarter. They sacrificed what little stealth they had for speed, and within a few minutes, they emerged behind a mob approaching Super Six-One.

Harry picked out the left flank of the mob, firing a couple of shots into it, accompanied by the other two using their FALs. Jack let loose a long stream of bullets from behind a massive lump of mud brick into the right flank. The mob compressed into the centre, kicking and shoving to get out of their line of fire. With them bunched up, it made it easier for the automatic weapons to cut them down, not even having to pick targets or aim, except simply to keep firing at chest level.

Ducking behind cover to reload, Harry found himself cornered by a dozen militiamen who had forgone guns for bilao knives and machetes. Scrambling to one side, he avoided a swipe and lashed out with a fist to his attacker's throat, which impacted with enough force that he felt the Somali's spine break.

Reaching to the back of his belt, he drew a parkerized ginunting short-sword as another Somali lunged at him. Parrying the attack by grabbing the attacker's arm and pushing it to one side, Harry dispassionately thrust the sword through his heart, with a twist to enlarge the wound before drawing the ginunting out, ignoring the Somali's lifeblood pumping out of the tear in his chest, as his life was still at risk.

Turning, he locked the blade of his ginunting against the blade of a third attacker's machete, giving him a chance to reach into his chest-mounted holster and pull out the MEUSOC Colt M45 1911. Wielding it in his left hand, he simply drove the barrel of the pistol into his attacker's temple before driving the short sword into his throat. Releasing it for a moment, he racked the slide on the M1911 before turning on the nine others. He gunned one of them down with a shot to the head, fired twice at a pair stood side-by-side, hitting them both in the left chest before ducking under a machete swing which passed along his arm, Harry vaguely hearing the fabric of his desert combats tearing open. Shooting the attacker with two bullets, he turned on the five remaining.

One went down with two bullets in the chest before the slide locked in the open position. Magazine empty. Harry cursed, chucking himself into a roll to avoid two machete attacks, tucking the pistol into his belt. He snatched up the ginunting he'd dropped and spun around, slitting open the stomach of one of the Somalis.

As he ducked another attack, the side-release buckle on the Arctic Warfare snapped open, releasing the rifle. Harry snatched it up before it could fall, and quickly dropped one of the attackers with a bullet to the solar plexus. He didn't have a bayonet, but that didn't mean he couldn't improvise. Jabbing the barrel into the stomach of one of the three remaining attackers, he then swung the rifle like a bat, bludgeoning him quite effectively, while gaining the distance to cycle the bolt and empty a shot into another attacker.

The last fully conscious and alive Somali evidently had some brain as he closed the distance very quickly, forcing Harry to drop the rifle and resort again to hand-to-hand combat... which was pretty stupid in itself. Grabbing the Somali's right wrist with his left hand, he drove the palm of his hand onto the centre of his attacker's forearm. With a sickening crack, he overloaded the amount of force the bone could take and snapped it before driving his right elbow into the Somali's solar-plexus before bringing it around and driving his fist into his opponent's throat. Finally, Harry drew his .38 Special backup revolver from his boot and fired a shot into the dazed Somali, before spinning around and taking aim on the other militiaman who had regained some level of consciousness.

He ducked as the blade cut the air again, but not far enough. Red hot pain lanced across his skin as the blade tore a channel from halfway down his right cheek to his jaw. Banishing the pain to the depths of his mind, Harry squeezed the trigger of the revolver... once... twice.

He saw Jock come in, an automatic pistol in one hand and a parkerized shortsword of his own in the other hand, fending off a group of advancing militia with gunfire and thrusts from the parkerized scramasax as Bill quickly moved in with a medikit and moved for Harry's arm. He hadn't realised that the cut which had opened the sleeve of his combats had also cut upon his arm.

They moved quickly to the Delta Force company around the wreck of Super Six-One, praying for an extraction by hook or by crook. Luckily the gift of thousands of rounds of 7.62 allowed the Deltas to keep their shooting up through the night, and in the morning, a number of them evacuated in an armoured column, while the SAS troop and a number of the remaining Deltas tabbed through the city to the exfiltration point.

* * *

 **17th October 1993, Somalia**

"Boss, you're going to want to have a look at this." whispered Jack, handing over a set of rangefinders.

Harry glanced at the sky, night was near to falling, light levels were going down. He took the rangefinders and moved up to the peak of the ridge behind which they were sheltering, just outside Mogadishu. He drew a sharp breath as they focused on a derelict pile of obsolete but extremely valuable aircraft in various states of disrepair lying on the stand at the airport. And the area was occupied by about a dozen militiamen, one holding the flag of the warlord and rebel Aidid.

"Get Jock and Bill, break out AWS rifles." he ordered, beginning to plan.

He quickly identified a couple of Hawker Hunters, several more MiG-19s, MiG-17s and MiG-21s. Harry had flown a Hunter a number of times during flying training as an incentive from MI5, and he'd come to love the aircraft, as much as the Seventy-Four Squadron Phantoms he'd qualified on and rather more than some of the other types he'd got to fly, like Eight Squadron's immense Avro Shackletons, or the Vulcan Demonstration Flight's delta-winged bomber, though both had been fun to fly and to get on his logbook. The Russian jets also were ones he was interested in acquiring, and probably handing over examples to the MoD at Boscombe Down.

Glancing behind him as Jock and Bill approached, each toting one of their suppressed sniper rifles. Harry quickly removed his SR-25 from its bag and detached the muzzle brake so he could attach a suppressor of his own.

"What's the plan?" asked Jock, straight to the point.

"I was thinking we split up, two of us go down there, two of us stay up here, kill the militia and I magic those aircraft into our custody, capisce?" Harry replied, screwing on the suppressor.

"I thought magic screwed up electronics?" Bill frowned.

"Only concentrated applications directly to the electronics." explained Harry; "I usually carry around a couple of shrunken crates of sufficient size when enlarged to carry a moderately large fast patrol boat. Basically the magic I've used has turned the interior of the crates into a pocket dimension, to which the crate is simply a door, so the contents are in fact, barely touched by magic."

"Okay... I'll take your word for it." chuckled Bill.

"Right, fifteen minutes and open fire. Jack, let's move out."

Harry slid around the corner of the control tower, with Bill up at the top. He pulled the covers on each end of his ACOG scope and turned on the Reflex sight mounted on top of that. He took a moment to steady his breathing when he heard footsteps approaching. Slowly lowering his rifle to hang by its sling, he dropped his Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife into his left hand and flexed his empty right hand.

A militiaman advanced around the corner, simply patrolling. He wasn't ready for the dark shape to detach itself from the shadows of the control tower. Harry wrenched his head to the right, breaking the militiaman's neck at the same moment as he plunged the dagger through a bundle of nerves, arteries and muscles, instantly killing him. Dragging the body out of the way, he cleaned the knife on the Somali's clothes before tucking it back up his sleeve.

Bringing up his rifle, Harry counted down to the fifteen minute mark, fixing a Somali with an RPK in his sights, the little red arrow placed right over his head. Slowly, he squeezed the trigger. With a muffled crack, the bullet took him through the forehead at the same moment as a suppressed MP5 sub-machine gun opened fire, launching an effective assault from the tower with more precise sniper fire taking out the remaining militiamen.

Drawing his wand from a sheath on his right forearm, Harry performed a quick proximity charm, making certain that apart from Bill in the tower, he was alone. He fastened the strap of his SR-25 with the rifle across his back as he moved to the closest aircraft, a rather battered MiG-21. A few 'reparo' charms and it was intact enough that he was confident that levitating it would not cause undue stress.

Pulling out a shrunken object from a pocket, Harry threw it to the ground several feet away, and after putting up a notice-me-not charm, cancelled the shrinking charm, producing a shipping crate with the doors open, accessing what looked like an immense expanded space, larger than the shipping crate had any right to be. He worked smoothly and swiftly, clearing out the dump of unwanted aircraft including a few MiG-15 trainer aircraft he'd found in an abandoned hanger.

" _Got militia moving in with technicals, coming in by the main airport road. Unless you feel confident fighting it out, I recommend we withdraw._ " Jock's voice came over an earpiece.

"Hang on!" Harry replied over the radio; "Got an idea."

One of the MiG-15 UTI trainers was intact enough that he felt confident starting it up, and it still had fuel on board. So with a pocket containing a shipping container full of aeroplanes, Harry hopped into the cockpit. He had already pinched a few aircraft during Desert Storm, and he knew his way around a Russian aircraft's systems, even one this obsolete. Within half a minute, the engine was running up with a loud whine as Harry quickly vaccated the area.

"Jock, mind shooting anyone who stays with the cars?" he requested.

" _Roger._ " replied the Scotsman; " _Looks like three gunners on HMGs and the drivers, we've got about twenty militia advancing towards the aircraft you left behind._ "

"Excellent." Harry muttered to himself, throwing himself behind a patch of sandy scrub forming a rampart about half a mile forward from Jock.

He unslung his rifle, putting it to one side before deploying the radio control for the quite significant amount of semtex he'd put in and on the aircraft. Semtex was a cocktail of RDX and PETN, creating an explosive with a greater pressure of explosion pound for pound than even the Americans' favourite C4.

Add in some ancient kerosene of dubious origin... Harry smirked, he'd seen the devastation one pound of semtex could cause, killing anything within about twenty feet. He carried the wonderfully inert plastic explosives in one-pound cubes, and had placed twenty of them in on and around the aircraft.

Darkness had fallen, but he could see clearly with his night-vision goggles. Flicking on the master arm on the radio control for the detonators, he raised his goggles, substituting them for a set of night vision binoculars with good zoom and focus. The militiamen weren't too bad. They set up a full perimiter around the running MiG before advancing inwards at a slow pace. Harry was a patient person and waited until they were within arm's reach of the aircraft.

"Boom fuckers." he muttered into his radio microphone, pressing the big red button.

The MiG-15 UTI weighed abound five tons. Five tons of shrapnel suddenly thrown outwards by an immense blast. Glad that he'd lowered his night-vision binoculars and covered his eyes from the light, Harry slowly allowed them to acclimatise to the immense fireball as he cleared up his kit and made for the exfiltration, a beat-up old Mil-8 to get them into Kenya when they decided they'd exacted suitable revenge for the fiasco of the Battle of Mogadishu.

And honestly, about a dozen aircraft, plus a rather nice explosion was... not enough Harry decided.

"Jock, going radio silent, I'll meet at the chopper in twenty-four hours." Harry said, sorting out what kit he had and needed.

* * *

 **18th October 1993**

Twenty-four hours later Jock McCabe was getting an itchy trigger finger, as were the other two SAS troopers. Usually lone-wolf missions were forbidden, but Harry was rather exceptional. That didn't change the fact that he had ten minutes to arrive. Focusing behind the scope of his rifle as the rough rumble of a technical greeted his ears, he focused on the driver's position, not being able to see through the glass of the windscreen.

The figure that stepped out when the car was a few yards from the chopper was definitely Harry, the messy hair that was a good inch and a half long in places, longer than was standard for military types. The non-standard rifle slung across his back and the twin short swords strapped to his belt.

"Oi Jock, you can come out now." called Harry.

Jock slowly emerged from behind a rocky outcrop, lowering his rifle as Harry moved up to greet him.

"I got a little more done, the back of the Hilux is packed with heavy and medium weapons that I thought might be useful for training purposes." Harry grinned; "Plus I picked up the two of Aidid's lieutenants that Task Force Ranger lost, so the Americans can pretend they had them all the time. And I might have killed one or two more of those bastards."

"Good. Let's get out of here. If I don't see Somalia again in my lifetime, it will be too soon." Jock stated, Bill and Jack silently emerging from patches of scrub making up bits of cover.

"Bill, grab the two tied up and unconscious Somali's from the back of the cabin, Jack, help us grab the weapons from the bed of the truck." Harry rattled off orders; "I'll be as happy as any of you to get out of this thrice-damned country. Our mission objectives to cause damage and spread chaos has been met, plus I've met the failed objectives of the last mission with sufficient time."

Soon they were on their way to a waiting C-130 in Kenya and a flight to the United States.

* * *

 **20th October 1993, Fort Bragg, North Carolina**

"Four soldiers from Britain requesting an immediate meeting General sir!" announced the Delta Force soldier who served as bodyguard to the JSOC premier, Major General Garrison.

"Send them in." sighed the tired General, sat behind his desk with his head on his arms, waiting until the four men were in the office and the door closed; "Here to gloat?"

"To the contrary." Harry stated; "I found out just this morning that Task Force Ranger succeeded in its mission objectives and the men you were sent to capture are currently in the custody of the United Nations after a two week delay in processing at an American base. I won't delude you with the news that it will save your career, but it'll end it on a better note."

"Fuck... You guys went back in and got them?" said Garrison.

"Yeah, we went back in." nodded Bill; "Fucked them up a bit, hit Mogadishu airport with a good bit of explosives and gunned down the militia. Then we split up, exfiltrating in two groups, my group on the way out machine-gunned a couple of militia roadblocks, killed two snipers and took out a mortar team." he wasn't going to mention Harry had made up one group on his own.

"Do you guys mind writing up your combat reports?" Garrison asked.

"Give us a week of downtime, we'll see what we can do." Jack stated after exchanging glances with the others.

"And Operative... Wolf, is it?" said the JSOC premier; "Your demands have been met, the President has signed a dispensation for you to bear and transport arms inside the country, and remove them from the country as you wish. To any country you take them to... that's down to you. Sealed orders relating to you have been issued to our airbases, you just need to contact them. Finally, a green card under a false name, that gives you unlimited time in the country and other rights you can research easily. There are in fact four copies of the dispensation and green card, one for each of you. And gentlemen, if you can arrange it with your government, it would be to your benefit to remain in-country for a while so that the President can speak to you."

Harry took the folder containing the aforementioned items and nodded slightly before the four left the room. Harry flicked open a pouch on his belt and withdrew a sealed bag containing a wad of US Dollars and handed it to Jock.

"Get a good hotel somewhere. Keep our heavier weapons on military bases if possible, keep your sidearms. I'll catch up sometime soon." he stated.

"Okay, have fun." Jock chuckled; "Mind the American birds, I'm told they can be quite territorial."

"Technically, it's you their husbands should watch out for. Surely you've realised girlfriends are for people with social lives and social lives are for people with nothing better to do with their time?" Harry riposted.

"What about that girl, what's-her-face, Nadya..?" asked Jock, smirking.

The other two made interested noises before ducking as Harry reached for his sidearm.


	6. Chapter 6

**Early November 1993, Washington D.C, America.**

Harry surveyed the safe house he'd set up near Washington. It was just down the Potomac River, had a quite big boathouse for a yacht of a hundred feet. The previous owners had wanted rid of the house as it was an immense red-brick and white-stone affair, a Georgian-style 'Colonial Revival' mansion, but it provided perfectly for him, with a lawn big enough for helicopter operations, indeed he had already brought in a Westland Gazelle and parked it in the garage.

Underneath the mansion was an immense cellar that he'd split into two parts, one for non-perishable foodstuffs and liquids, the second an armoury. He'd brought in a professional warding company he'd set up with himself as silent partner and a number of miffed first-generation witches and wizards jumping at the prospect of employment. They warded the whole house to hell and back, while he himself had installed magically-enhanced security. Pressure pads, concealed cameras, motion sensors, all linked to both the wards and an alert system at Ravenscroft Manor where his personal butler, bailiff and regent, Victor Dubose could contact him or send some of the military veterans on his payroll to go and sort out the problem.

Satisfied, he headed out front where a neat '71 Ford Mustang Shelby Cobra GT500KR was sat. The car was a gleaming blood red with jet black stripes up the bonnet and sides of the car, all in all, while not usually his 'thing', it suited the settings very well, while not lacking the pace that he frequently needed.

Draining the last dregs of a mug of coffee, he slid into the car, the seven-litre V8 bellowing into life. Harry shook his head at the ridiculousness of the car, when he revved it, the entire thing shook from side to side. Reversing away from the front door of the mansion, he suddenly lifted off the power, jerking the steering to fully left, spinning the car around before making use of the first of a mere four gears.

* * *

"And for the hero of the moment!" called out one of the Delta Force operators as the red Mustang roared up outside the Virginia Beach restaurant-cum-bar they were occupying that afternoon in the unseasonably warm weather.

The three other SAS troopers had already arrived, and now about two-dozen plainclothes soldiers were occupying the terrace above the promenade.

"Sorry I couldn't get here in time, fucking traffic." Harry apologised, forgoing the stairs up for simply pulling himself up over the terrace wall.

"No problem man." replied the Delta, shaking his hand; "Heard you went back into that hell-hole right after getting out?"

"We rested a week to lick our wounds, replace worn-out gun barrels and expended ordnance, then drove to where we acquired a Mil helicopter and flew to a few miles from Mogadishu. But we returned and made one hell of a mess." replied Harry with an unrepentant grin.

"Where were you guys during the early stages of the battle?" asked another Delta, not out of any sense that they hadn't been around, in fact it had been noticeable that quite a few militiamen, specifically those with heavier weapons and rocket launchers had been taken out by silent, subsonic rifle fire.

"We picked a building a few blocks from the Olympia Hotel, nice thick walls but with windows affording a good field of fire. I had Bill and Jack reinforce the windows with sandbags, as well as creating prone-position shooting rests. We piled up our ordnance and weapons and spent a while prior to the fight tracking down militia hotspots and taking them out." Harry explained, taking a glass of whiskey he'd been handed; "Then when you lot piled in, we set up shop and started killing the priority targets. We couldn't get everyone because we could only fire so fast."

"That mission was fucked from the beginning mate." one of the Deltas shook his head; "Kudos to Garrison, but unguided rockets, in sufficient quantity will fuck up a mission that involves low-level slow-moving heli-borne assaults. You guys stopped it becoming a total bloodbath, with the number of RPGs I saw out there and the number of helicopters still buzzing about. The fact they didn't get any more of us was a miracle."

"Come on, let's drink to the dead and feel sorry for hell after they get there." interrupted the eldest of the Delta Operators.

"Hooah!" Harry and every other soldier there cheered.

Death was a natural part of the circle of life, even if it came prematurely. They were used to death and just used it as an excuse to get plastered.

"Heard you lot got to meet the CinC?" asked the same Delta after they'd drunk their toast.

"Yeah, he was pissed, apparently a lot of people are pushing for a rushed retreat from Somalia. He thinks it will end up in chaos for the US military and anarchy for Somalia." Harry answered; "Still, you could have far worse as a President. Oh, he also gave me free reign to raid Davis-Monthan for surplus airframes to use myself. I may have implied they would end up as spares for my Phantom, but who cares?"

"Hah!" the Delta let loose a barking laugh.

* * *

Before heading back to Britain, Harry took his Spey-powered F-4 Phantom across the States in a fast sprint, hopping between airbases until he reached Davis-Monthan. He'd discovered that the contents of the sealed orders pertaining to him were rather ambiguous, the President himself ordering that 'all assistance, no matter what' was to be offered without reserve to him. Harry suddenly decided he needed some spares for his Phantom.

A few hours later, he arrived in at the immense desert airbase, having overflown it once to have a look before circling to land. As the sea-blue Phantom taxied in, Harry could see that there was plenty of activity on the stand, a marshal and a couple of ground crew with a ladder expecting him since he'd headed up to maximum ceiling and radioed down to the base.

Harry raised the canopy of the front cockpit, lightening the cockpit space a bit as he'd painted the acrylic material with a reflective, metallic blue paint about the same shade as the rest of the aircraft, providing an all-round sun-visor. The first thing that hit him was the immense heat of Arizona, nearly as bad as Somalia.

Following the directions of the marshal, Harry brought the aircraft to a halt on the stand and cut the engines which began to whine down. Finishing shutting down the aircraft, he unstrapped himself, disarmed the ejector seat and began to climb out as a ladder was propped up against the side

"Thanks gents." he said, dropping from the ladder onto the concrete.

"Nice bird sir." said one of the American ground crew, moving over to help him out of the parachute pack.

"She does the job." Harry grinned; "And does it pretty damn fast. Is there anywhere around this place where a guy can get some good food?"

"Base canteen's okay, but there's a pretty good pizza restaurant in central Tucson." replied another ground crew 'Erk'.

"Thanks lads, I'll go and see if I can grab a car from the motor pool." Harry replied, patting his pockets to make sure his usual gear was there. Wallet, Green Card, sidearm, and the collection of forms he had to write out after each leg of a sortie. His own logbook was just a clip file, so he kept the current page or pages in a wallet in his pocket to fill out, plus the aircraft operational log and aircraft engineering log.

Pulling off his bone-dome, Harry dumped it in the hands of one of the erks.

"Brim the tanks and the drop tanks please mate. Make sure to make a note of how much you put in, and calculate it in Imperial Gallons." Harry ordered before making for an open-top HMMWV which had pulled up. Making a mental note to get hold of a few of them for both the SAS and his own use on the estates, he made his way over to the vehicle as a burly NCO climbed out.

"Master Sergeant Johnson sir!" the NCO introduced himself with a sharp salute, which Harry returned with well-practised casualness and apathy. "CO wants to speak to you in his office."

"Okay, lead the way." Harry agreed; "But after that I'm heading into town and getting a bite to eat."

"I'll arrange so that someone is available to drive you over there. I know a damn good pizza restaurant in town sir." said the NCO.

"I know, one of the erks told me." chuckled Harry.

"Erks?" Johnson asked.

"British slang for ground crew." Harry explained.

"Right sir." replied Johnson with a dubious look on his face.

A few minutes later, Harry was being shown into the office of the base CO, which to be honest, looked like the office of the sheriff of some old western township. His first glance at the man behind the desk had his brain screaming 'cowboy!'. The man was wearing tan trousers and shirt, with cowboy boots propped up on the desk and a bullet belt on his desk with two Colt Single Action Army revolvers in holsters attached to it. Hung on the back of the door was a wide-brimmed stetson.

The moment that the NCO had vanished, Harry turned to the CO.

"Afternoon sheriff." he said with a smirk.

"Damn you Brits are the most brazen and sacrilegious types I've ever met!" the CO laughed; "Strange thing you arrive only a few days since I received sealed orders with the description of your aircraft on it. I was rather confused when I opened them..."

"Really?" asked Harry, raising an eyebrow; "I read them at it seemed fairly clear. Or possibly just rather open to interpretation, and my current interpretation is procuring some spares for my Phantom, Spey powered though it is."

"If you need engines, I can supply you with those, though they're difficult to transport in fighter jets and not the right type." said the CO; "You might want a bigger transport aircraft."

"Funny." Harry said with a deadpan look; "No, I've got a pretty big stockpile of spare engines. It's other parts. Even spare airframes if necessary. And coming to think about, any F-100 spares you still have, I've got a working airframe to keep in the air, though I've fitted a massively more powerful engine to it so I don't need those."

"Tell me, would you take other... unrelated... airframes." said the officer, leaning forward, a serious look on his face.

"I'd be open to having a look at them." Harry responded.

"Good. I've got a lot of old B-52s to scrap, which means I've managed to keep a good few old Vietnam types around, but there are people up the command asking why they're not in the melting pot. I can't officially hand them over to a foreign national, civilian or military... however there are loopholes." stated the CO.

"There are several ways... I can simply vanish the aircraft from America... it's not hard, I've done it with other countries. Or a few months ago I bought out a failing museum... it might be possible to transfer the aircraft to that." Harry mused.

"Or we could try both..?" offered the CO.

"Indeed." Harry agreed, offering his hand; "I'm going to go and get a bite, several people have recommended a pizza restaurant in the city, then I'll have a look around the aircraft, see which ones to take, plus what spares I need."

"Agreed."


	7. Chapter 7

**January 1994, Bradbury Lines, Herford, England**

Harry glanced over the latest figures from his accountant, and the figures weren't quite as high as he'd wished. An old hunting lodge up near Edinburgh had been heavily renovated for his use and the old estate cottages made available to rich businessman to shoot and and miss the local wildlife for an immense fee, and come the time the deer needed to be culled, a group of veterans he'd moved into an old mansion on the Sussex coast would take a week's holiday and do the job properly, much of the deer, pheasant and partridge being sold to butchers at a premium.

However, to counter that and some astute investing were some heavy expenses. Rolls-Royce for a contract to manufacture their Concorde-powering Olympus 593 turbojet for four aircraft, one unit each plus spares and the fitting. The aircraft were a Convair Delta Dart and three F-105 Thunderchiefs, one a single-seater, one a trainer variant and the third a Wild Weasel anti-radar strike fighter. SNECMA had billed him for the fitting of M53 turbojets to one F-4E Phantom and an F-104 Starfighter that he'd, in an optimistic mood, christened 'The Sarcophagus'. Volvo had also billed him with the replacement of the two J57 engines in each of his two F-101 Voodoos with Volvo RM8 units.

The wide spread of aircraft might seem excessive, but when he'd found himself in France with an F-4K that refused to start and a need to be halfway across the world in so few hours that no commercial or military transport could fly, it had seemed a doomed proposition until he'd 'borrowed' a Mirage 2000 fighter from the Armée de l'Air. Luckily, nobody had billed him or requested the return of the superb little aeroplane. By the time Rolls-Royce had even begun to sort out the problem with the starter motor for the Speys, he had been jetting around the world for a week. He had eventually had the starter replaced with a fully electrical internal start system.

However, he had been working hard since returning from America. Harry had walked into the SAS armoury, looked around and realised that the entire unit was a fucking mess. He was now waiting for the call from the DSF for a meeting to sort out the aforementioned mess before it got someone killed.

Throwing aside the accounts, dumping the book in a drawer that he quickly locked and warded, Harry stood up, tucking his MEUSOC M45 into the back of his jeans as the phone rang.

"Potter here." Harry stated, the phone against his head.

" _Potter, this is Delves and the CO, mind coming up to The Office, I was informed you wanted a chat?_ " asked the voice on the other end of the phone line.

"I'll be up immediately." Harry replied, cutting off the call.

Settling into one of the mismatched bits of furniture in front of the SAS CO, callsign Lion and the Director of Special Forces and former SAS CO, Cedric Delves, Harry matched their stares.

"You said there are some issues." stated Delves.

"Yes... shall we start with equipment I think." Harry mused; "We're operating more and more on overseas territory, usually not friendly to us and we're encountering small arms, rockets and bombs that are perfectly capable of destroying our Land Rovers, as I prove when during the Somalia operation, in a month of missions before Mogadishu, four of my Pinkies were destroyed, so I started using stolen technicals and dressing as a Somali with my face covered. If we are to have light vehicles, the Land Rover is rapidly becoming insufficient. Our weapons are the same. We're lucky that our Accuracy International rifles are sufficient in quality, though I generally buy my own, and often variants we don't use like the purpose-made suppressed rifle. However, the quantity is not sufficient for widespread use."

He paused to make a note on a bit of paper before resuming; "Some of our troopers don't use the heavier rifles I prefer, but the M4 carbines we have at the moment have nothing but their iron sights and are tired, old weapons that have been lying around for twenty years. And between you and me, the number of sets of night-vision equipment in this unit including privately owned, is ten."

"So, we need to get upgrading?" asked Delves.

"No quibbling with my points?" Harry riposted.

"No. When you start shit-stirring, we need to start listening." Lion shook his head.

"Right. I'd say at least enough sets of night-vision equipment for one deployed squadron. Spares as well. My goggles are aviation ones and fucking expensive, but worth it." Harry answered; "And since quite a lot of troopers like the M4 platform, customised AR rifles are... not my thing but pretty good. Scopes, sights, lasers, get them. Our MP5SD6 sub-machine guns will do, they're as effective as we need for that purpose. We need to upgrade medium-range rifles, apart from a few privately owned M14s and FALs, as well as my SR-25, we're sorely lacking in-between assault rifle and sniper rifle range."

"Colt manufacture the majority of the AR series... procure them through Canada and that will make things easier." noted Lion; "I think we can probably dig out a company in the Commonwealth through which to source these rifles."

"So we need to look at semi-automatic battle rifles that can be used as marksman's rifles, or vice-versa." said Delves thoughtfully.

"If it helps, back in '92, the USMC put out a need for a similar weapon, though it currently hasn't come to anything." Harry offered.

"Final subject... cars. Our budget is limited, so I'm not seeing a whole lot of movement on that front. If we need a major modernisation, we need to prove ourselves worth it." Lion stated.

"If we go out somewhere and fail to do anything, the government will say 'why would we bother increasing the budget of these morons'. If we go out somewhere and go on a highly effective offensive, they'll say 'obviously such budget increases are unnecessary as you are already able to perform the mission perfectly!'." Harry commented irritably.

"You took the nail, put it on the head of your victim and then hit the head of the victim." said Delves with a smirk.

"Heh." Harry chuckled; "Present me with a politician and I'll do exactly that. And if you're curious, the goggles I use are Foxtrot-Four-Niner-Four-Niner aviator's night-vision. And in my opinion, each patrol should have four close-quarters weapons of their choice, a general purpose machine gun, a long range rifle and a medium range marksman's rifle, even if it doubles over for close quarters combat."

"I'll make a note of it." replied Lion; "I'm going to make a personal investigation of the problems you've mentioned, and probably spend quite a bit of money on buying some guns."

"If you need someone to smuggle weapons for you, I've got some very fast jets." Harry smirked.

"Now now, we're not supposed to encourage that sort of behaviour." chided Delves; "Okay, Captain, head back to your quarters or whatever you were doing."

"I've got to head back home." Harry said, glancing at his watch; "Then drive over to Portsmouth to pick up a really big bag of guns from Accuracy International."

"Have fun." said Lion, grinning.

"I will." was Harry's riposte before walking out.

"Looks like the ordure's going to hit the ventilator." commented Lion.

"You got that kid noted down for future unit CO?" asked Delves.

"Uh-huh, I'll be long gone from the unit by then, but the council of NCOs want to keep him in the unit, not just the usual year, two years, but until he retires." replied Lion.

"He's a hard bastard, probably what this unit needs. When's the next deployment?"

"D Squadron to Eastern Europe, the Bosnia, Croatia and Yugoslavia area. Mission parameters are to set up safe houses and prepare for direction of air-strikes, sabotage supply lines and cause maximum damage to military and transport infrastructure." said Lion.

"I should know that, I wrote the bloody briefing document." grumbled Delves; "Other missions?"

"Just one sir, a Russian drug kingpin on the Riviera with KGB ties who has annoyed Her Majesty's Government a very great deal, but we haven't managed to get him yet." Lion replied after shuffling through his files; "We had a Mexican sex slave trafficker but an A Squadron trooper blew him up last week."

"Put Potter on both, with his Section Five." said Delves.

"Both sir?" asked Lion; "Wolf doesn't specialise in assassination."

"He does now." growled the DSF; "I'm going to make or break that kid as either a vegetable or the best soldier this country has ever had. Besides, he might have a bit of hocus pocus to add to the operations where others have failed."

"On your head be it." replied Lion; "As for his recommendations, I recommend we get D Squadron kitted out before they are deployed in one month's time."

"Do it. And remind me, what's the name of that Filipino chappie who has been petitioning to get put back on the active duty roster? You know the one who refuses to be called a Grand Master of Eskrima?" asked Delves.

"That'd be Warrant Officer Nicolas Matiyaga Zacarias." Lion answered.

"Put him on Section Five, brief him on Secret M and get him training them. I know McCabe is an expert Krav Maga practitioner and has been training the other three, but variety never harmed anyone." Delves ordered.

"Yes sir."

"Now, let's head to the armoury and take stock of what we have."

* * *

Harry grabbed the car he kept in the Bradbury Lines car-park, a dark-blue Lister-Jaguar , heading out around Hereford to Shobdon aerodrome, one of very few airfields in the area, where he kept an aircraft, usually a piston-engined fighter for getting about England when not in a great rush. Since the Spitfire had eaten its starter motor and he didn't have time to fix it, he'd brought another aircraft out of his storage, a Hawker Sea Fury, which had only needed paperwork filling out and the inhibiting oil burnt out of the engine before he flew it.

Abandoning the Lister in the car-park, he quickly produced a pre-written flight-plan, dated and signed it before filing it with the controller. After walking around, checking the control surfaces, Harry went around to the front of the aircraft, and by hand, turned the engine over by the massive five-blade propeller, making it turn over three full revolutions. He then lowered the stirrup on the port side of the fuselage next to the trailing edge of the win. Putting his foot into the stirrup, he heaved himself up onto the inboard section of the folded wing, using said foot to retract the stirrup back up.

Unlocking the canopy, Harry slid it open, reached in and pulled out his parachute. Pulling the belt straps across his stomach and attaching them to the main disc lock of the chute which went under his crotch, he then attached the shoulder straps, which also locked into each other at chest level. He then picked up the flying helmet from the seat, pulling it over his head and doing it up under his chin, making sure that the oxygen and radio tubes and wires didn't get mixed up.

Sliding into the cockpit, he pulled the seat straps over his parachute straps but under the helmet tubes and wires before plugging those into the aircraft. Harry first of all confirmed using the stick, the mirror and his own eyes, that the controls had full and free movement, and that the undercarriage was as he'd left it, down and with the brakes on. The rudder trim was set to counter the torque swing from about three-thousand horsepower of race-tuned Bristol Centaurus. He gave the hand pump for the hydraulic system a couple of firm pumps, set the manual control for the two-speed supercharger, checked the fuel supply was off, that the throttle had full and free movement.

He opened the RPM lever to full, checked the flaps were up both visually and by the instruments, the arrestor hook he'd never had to use was locked up, checked the lights for the undercarriage were green, checked the ignition was off. Setting the compass as it had drifted to tell him that his own engine was the North Pole, Harry then checked the altimeter to be correct for the airfield. A couple more instrument checks followed before he pulled his oxygen mask across his face and took a couple of breaths from the oxygen tanks, checking the quality and flow of oxygen.

After lowering the canopy and locking it, Harry opened the cooling shutters for the engine, checked the engine gauges were reading correctly for an engine that wasn't running. He then turned on the fuel cock and the tested the booster pump, made sure that the aircraft was set to draw from the onboard tanks, not absent drop tanks, and checked the contents of the tanks. Turning on the navigation lights, Harry visually checked they were blinking away, checked the air intake filter was set to filter the air and then turned on the fuel pump.

He pressed the injector button and held it down to pump an excess of fuel into the cylinders as they had a habit of draining to the bottom of the radial engine. Harry switched on the ignition and pressed the starter-booster coil button, drawing back the fuel cut off to normal. The five blades of the propeller passed his windscreen once each before the engine spewed grey smoke and burst into life with an earth-shattering bellow. Holding the stick right back in his stomach to stop the aircraft bounding forwards, Harry set the RPM to twelve-hundred and kept an eye on the temperature, while also checking that the generator was gathering juice.

After turning on the radio, Harry made his intentions clear to the tower, exercised the propeller control and the supercharger control before releasing the brakes, immediately reapplying them to test them and releasing them again. He slid the control for the wings down from 'folded' to 'spread' before adjusting the throttle friction nut so that the vibration wouldn't suddenly cut the engine halfway through the takeoff. With the Sea Fury rolling forward, Harry easily directed the old fighter down the taxiway to the end of the section of the old runway that was in use.

Reapplying the brakes at the end of the runway, he pulled the stick back into his stomach, opening up the throttle to full power against the modern brakes he'd had fitted. Then a few moments later, Harry received permission for a takeoff. Closing the throttle to one-third power, he released the brakes, the Sea Fury pulling forward. It wasn't quite his Phantom, Harry mused as he applied a boot-full of rudder to keep the fighter straight. He steadily opened the throttle back up to full power, not even having to move the stick from the centre for the Sea Fury to bound into the sky. Closing the undercarriage, Harry spiralled up to five thousand feet and set a course for Kent.

The massive piston fighter taxied up behind the hangars at Ravenscroft Manor, turning into the back of one and halting inside to face forward onto the track to the driveway-cum-runway. The Spitfire was parked in the old orangery, one of the actual buildings of the manor complex, the Super Sabre, the F-4K Phantom and the 'borrowed' Mirage occupying three of the other hangers, the other three standing empty.

His recent acquisitions from bone-yard at Davis-Monthan Air Base were either two-hundred miles south-south-east at Brétigny-sur-Orge Air Base being fitted with new engines by SNECMA or were a hundred thirty-five miles away to the west at Filton under the care of Rolls-Royce, doing the same job.

Glancing at both the sun and his watch, Harry decided that he'd leave visiting Accuracy International until the morning. A little detour in the opposite direction from his flight-plan for a couple of laps around the Machynlleth Loop had cost a bit of time, so to get to Portsmouth would require busting most of the speed limits in the country. Besides, he was sore, battered and bruised from a martial arts lesson from Jock, who, under orders from Harry himself, hadn't spared any punches.

Unstrapping, Harry slowly pulled himself out of the aircraft and dropped onto the tarmac. Making a note to add a couple more of the fabric hangers, or possibly just extend the current ones for multiple aircraft, he climbed into the lightweight Land Rover that he kept lying around the estate for getting between places on the estate. Heading out around the back of the manor, he pulled into the courtyard outside the kitchen and servant's area.

"Good evening sir." chirruped Jimmy Butler cheerfully as Harry poked his head around the iron-studded door.

"Something cooking?" Harry asked, his nose twitching at the aromas coming from beyond the corner of the room.

"Got a big green curry on the hob and the rice soaking." Jimmy grinned; "Daisy's going to get serving in about five minutes, you going to join us commoners?"

Jimmy was a big, florid-faced man of about fifty with close-cut greying hair, a former soldier who Harry employed to cook for the household staff and had lived up to the expectations as a superb chef. He was also because he was a highly-skilled Falklands War veteran from 42 Commando the Royal Marines, while his wife was an ex-Royal Medical Corps nurse who had a habit of fussing over Harry's well-being every time he was around.

"Sure, let me head upstairs and get out of my flying gear, I'll meet in the dining room." Harry replied, heading out of the kitchen and dodging Daisy's gaze.

A few minutes later, Harry was dressed in his usual scruffy manner, combat boots, khaki cargo trousers and an 'I love my F-4' t-shirt completing the motley ensemble. He slipped into the group gathering outside the dining room in the rear of the house, the main hall very rarely being used.

"Didn't expect you today." said Victor, his personal butler and estate manager.

"I needed to be down south today, but I decided not to bother with a hit-and-run visit." Harry replied.

"Well come in!" bellowed Jimmy in a good impersonation of Brian Blessed; "Food's served!"

"Hear hear!" everyone cheered.

* * *

 **January 1994, Ravenscroft Manor, Kent**

Upon awakening, Harry quickly went through his 'in country, at home' morning routine. Cooking his own breakfast in the small kitchen attached to his quarters, he quickly ate it before heading out for a run around the estate. A shower and a second breakfast followed before he headed into his study.

Making a beeline for the printer plugged into the fax machine when he noticed a ream of paper lying in front of it, Harry grabbed the sheets of paper and sat down at his desk to sort through it. His left eyebrow climbed as he read through each sheet. The first was moderately unusual, an SAS commission for fifteen Accuracy International Arctic Warfare Suppressed model rifles and twenty standard L96 rifles, all suitably sanitized with no serial numbers. A private request between the SAS and Accuracy International for an investigation into higher-velocity rounds integrated into the weapon system.

A deployment order, one month's time to Bosnia and orders to pick up a more detailed briefing document on the subject... and a transfer to Section Five of one Warrant Officer Nicolas Zacarias. Harry frowned, hating when people messed around with his little unit, though he knew Zacarias by reputation. He'd been a captive of a Filipino terrorist who the SAS took down and tagged along, becoming a British citizen, but had been on the instructor rotation since the end of the Gulf War. If Zacarias ended up with Section Five, he'd probably get the piss taken out of him for his name before it got shortened.

He was lucky, that Hadrian had already become Harry. Andrew McCabe became Jock, Sir William FitzAlbert de Mornay, fifth Baronet was Bill and Jonathan Whitehill was Jack. He read over the last fax. Assassination. Not missions he enjoyed, though nobody he'd killed failed to deserve the fate he handed to them. Harry just hated playing God, chosing to target and end someone's life. Tearing up the faxes except for those that he'd personally deliver to Accuracy International, he threw the scraps of paper on the remains of the previous night's fire, making sure that the embers lit enough to destroy the faxes.

Donning a Barbour jacket over his combat boots, jeans and t-shirt ensemble of the day, Harry headed down to the garage on the east side of the manor, where he kept the cars that he had working. The number was increasing as slowly, he made his way through dozens upon dozens of inherited vehicles from the other side of the manor, having them restored.

The car he chose was a 'classic hotrod', an Aston Martin DB4 body, interior and chassis attached to modern brakes, wider wire wheels with fat tyres and modern disc brakes, a tuned up four-litre straight-six and better suspension. Far more reliable, faster and better handling, but with all the class that he liked.

The boot also, like most of his cars, had a gun safe.

* * *

With a great throbbing roar, the Aston Martin pulled to a halt in the car park of Accuracy International after being thrashed east across the southern counties of Britain. Harry checked his pockets to make sure he had the relevant bits of paper. He also patted the slight bulge under his jacket where his M45 1911 pistol was tucked into his waistband.

He didn't like being around anyone else with guns, no matter what, unless he had one himself. Or several. There was a second pistol concealed on inside of his leather jacket, a Coonan .357 Magnum M1911 semi-automatic pistol and a Heckler and Koch P9 in an ankle holster. Harry's own view on the controversial topic of firearms such as handguns was an allowance for the carrying of sidearms by vetted off-duty soldiers and police officers, but he felt that allowing civilians to have them was risky, because it would only take one lunatic to create a bloodbath. Besides too many British people remembered, or had inherited the knowledge from their parents, the bloody fields of the two world wars and thus generally people, who weren't blatently military, carrying weapons were avoided like the plague in Britain.

Looking over the car park, Harry went around to the back of the car and opened up the boot. First of all opening a combination lock, he then repeated the action with a different code on a combination padlock attached to an old-fashioned bolt, he then unlocked a last lock with a key to open the gun safe.

In the safe were the two Arctic Warfare Suppressed rifles Section Five had been using in Mogadishu and a pair of L96 Arctic Warfare rifles, one of which he used for training and the second was an operational rifle he'd been using as a conventional sniper since Day One in Iraq.

Grabbing each by their straps, he bundled them into a single gun bag. Unlocking a second internal safe, Harry removed the bolts for each weapon and added them to bag, then after a moment's pause, transferred five magazines of match-grade sniping ammunition to the bag. Locking everything back up, he hoisted the bag over his shoulder and headed towards the slightly grotty-looking metal warehouse which housed the Accuracy International factory.

A minute later Harry was stood in front of a desk, resisting the urge to shoot someone. Or more specifically the man sat behind the desk who apparently had no idea what he was supposed to be doing and had gone into a flat spin the moment Harry mentioned that he had an appointment.

"Ah, Wolf!" said a slightly-balding man, poking his head around the door; "Heard you were coming over, do come through." he gestured for Harry to follow him; "How are you finding our rifles?"

"Without compare." Harry said immediately; "But I've got a long-term deployment coming up and I want to make sure the rifles are in good condition, which I doubt given the amount of use and abuse they've seen."

"Let's head through to the workshop then." said the engineer; "I can take a look at the weapons."

They headed to an empty work bench against one wall of the rifle workshop, a capacious room full of bits of weapons, towers of drawers with components and tools. Harry hefted the bag onto the bench and pulled out the first rifle, his practise L96. Two dark green stripes were painted around the magazine housing and the area with the bolt so that he knew which bolt to use.

"I've been using this one quite a bit for practise, thirty rounds a day when I'm on base to keep my skills sharp." Harry explained as he slid the bolt in; "I'm not sure what the total use is, but it's not too badly abused, it's not my take everywhere weapon but just for practise, and I clean it thoroughly both before and after use."

"Should be good." the engineer noted, screwing his face up as he put a loupe against his eye and, after checking there were no rounds loaded, began an inspection. "Some wear and tear, personally, if you just want to keep practising, keep that barrel, if you are taking this on an active-duty deployment, then a fresh barrel, otherwise no problems."

"Excellent." Harry replied, taking the rifle back, dry firing it at the ground and removing the bolt and putting both aside. "Second rifle is another L96, but this one I have abused, it has been dragged through deserts, swamps, up mountains and underwater. I used it regularly during Desert Storm and periodically during a more recent deployment, though I used the AWS rifles rather more there."

He removed the battered, slightly singed rifle from the bag, the tan colouring fading from it, a load of dry scrub plant-life held on with old wire to aid concealment. Slotting in the bolt, he handed the rifle to the engineer.

"Goodness gracious me... the barrel is worn out... no debris or scarring so it has been well-maintained but has been used so much that the rifling will be unlikely to grip the bullet enough for satisfactory long-range shooting." the engineer commented.

"I was fighting CQB and short-range marksman's role so there wasn't a noticeable degradation in accuracy." Harry shrugged; "I generally use a mixture of Sierra 'Matchking' premium grade hundred and seventy-five grain open-tip with flash-less primers when I have access to it and whatever rounds I can lay my hands on, generally just GPMG rounds taken out of a belt."

"Bolt is in good condition, a spring needs replacing and the extractor claw has been filed down a bit too much, depending on how long you have, we can either replace the bolt, replace the bolt and repair the current one leaving you with two, or simply repair it." the Engineer offered.

"May as well do the second, spares are always useful and I'll be out of the country in a month, deployed again." Harry decided immediately; "Throw in the two fresh barrels for the L96s, plus two spares and one of those loupes so I can decided if I need to change barrels in the field. I don't need to say that lives depend on my skill and your rifles."

"Indeed you don't." murmured the engineer, handing Harry the rifle which he quickly put aside, producing the two AWS covert sniper rifles.

"I don't know about the wear to these as obviously they use subsonic rounds, but I've abused them a bit, out of necessity." Harry said with a grimace on his face.

"Deary me... why don't you go and shoot at a bit of paper while I consider how much work would be needed to put these back in operation and whether it would be cheaper just to get a new rifle." murmured the engineer; "Go and tell Gordon at the range that Sid wants him to get a rifle out for you. And take my ID card."

Harry chuckled, grabbing the magazines of hundred-and-seventy grain ammunition from the bag and stuffing them in his pockets along with the engineer's ID card before heading over to the door into a hallway. Following his ears to where he could he the blast of gunshots, Harry grabbed a set of ear defenders from a peg outside and put them on before going in.

Stepping in, he was immediately approached by an Accuracy International employee. In response, the man quickly unlocked a gun safe and handed him an L96 rifle. Harry opened the bolt, slotting in one of the magazines, leaving the bolt open, no round chambered as he watched the rifleman cycle through another two rounds.

Soon the shooter had expended his bullets, and as Harry transferred the two M1911s to the back of his waistband, the target was reeled in, perforated with holes. One was just below-centre but on the target while the other four were scattered around in a fairly close grouping.

"Not bad." Harry commented after they'd all lowered their ear defenders, not noticing the spotter at the shooting rest on the far side of a wall designed to prevent ejected cartridges and muzzle gases causing harm to other marksmen.

"Think you can do any better?" asked the man challengingly.

"I can give it a go." Harry stated with a grin.

"The target is a humanoid figure, but at the distance down the range and the scale on the target, you're effectively shooting at a human around half a mile away." said the man; "George Roberts."

"Harry Potter." Harry replied, shaking his hand; "Shall we get on with this? Actually, tell you what, I'll buy your a round at a good local pub if I lose."

"And I'll do the same if I lose." he agreed, clapping Harry on the back.

Lowering the ear defenders, Harry placed the rifle down next to the shooting matt and lay down. He picked up the rifle, closing the bolt on a round and snapping open the bipod. Pulling the safety catch on, he adjusted his position, leaning on his right elbow with his left arm couching the underside of the stock which was held firmly against shoulder. Lifting his chest slightly from the matt so his diaphragm didn't affect his aim, Harry lowered his eye to the scope, sliding the safety catch off. He measured his breathing, slowing it and concentrating on the new target at the end of the range.

Aim small, miss small. At least that was the theory. The target was a stereotypical stormtrooper facing the shooter, with 'evil' glinting eyes and a rifle across his body, as well as a coal-scuttle helmet. Moving the crosshairs slightly, he slowly squeezed the trigger, which had a fairly light pull. The rifle barked, jerking back into his shoulder and forward. A small hole opened up in the paper right in the centre a quarter of the way up the coal-scuttle helmet.

"Hit, probably forehead." said a voice Harry recognised, but as an eyebrow climbed, he cycled the bolt, loading in a fresh round.

Not raising his eye from the scope, he chose a new target. The heart was probably just below the bayonet of the target's rifle. He chose the bottom of the rifle barrel itself as the target. Steadying his breathing again, Harry slowly tensed his finger on the trigger with the crosshairs dead on target. The gun rocked back with a flash from the muzzle and a loud blast as a bullet punched through the paper leaving a visible white outline around the hole.

"Hit, upper left torso." said the same voice.

"Someone owes me a beer." Harry said smugly

Slowly driving the bolt handle up and then drawing it open, Harry chambered another bullet, lowering the sights to a different target. A jagged line of white followed the showed the air between the target's trouser legs until it met the crotch. Harry smirked, sadism was fine if the target was made of paper. Slowly increasing the pressure on the trigger, he fired again.

"Ouch, that was the crotch." their spotter commented.

"Let's go for two head shots, all or nothing." Harry stated.

Another cartridge flicked out of the gun, landing on another with a loud _ping_ as Harry drove the bolt home on his penultimate bullet. Taking a shallow breath, Harry held it with the crosshairs centred on the nose of the stormtrooper as he squeezed the trigger. The bark and recoil barely affected him, cycling the bolt to chamber another round with the satisfying sight of another hole. Smoothly loading in the final round of the magazine, Harry lined up his final target.

"Going for the left eye." he stated.

Applying the pressure to the trigger steadily, his breath held for a few moments, he fired the last bullet. It punched right through the paper where the eye of the stormtrooper was printed.

"Five for five." Harry commented, removing the expended cartridge, recovering his magazine and pulling off his ear defenders.

"Damn. I thought I was a good shot, how the hell did you manage that?" demanded Roberts.

"A lot of practise, many pallets of bullets Mr. Roberts." Harry replied with an easy grin; "And I just returned from a deployment to Somalia with UNOSOM II, so I've had a lot of practise under strain."

Harry's opponent was just about to make further comment when Sid the engineer poked his head round the door.

"Wolf, if you'd like to come through, I've finished examining your weapons."

"Of course." Harry replied, handing the L96 back to the Accuracy International employee supervising the range. "I'll have to take you up on the results of the bet some other time."

"Hah! You'll have to come down to the hunting preserve I work at in Bavaria at some point, I'll see how you do in the field." Roberts replied.

"I think I have some free time in... sixteen years. Get some practise in and we might be a bit more equal." Harry mocked.

"You've got guts kid." said his opponent, offering a hand.

"I usually wear them around my neck, though I can't actually remember whose guts they were." riposted Harry, shaking his hand before heading through to the workshops to find two completely new rifles sitting on the bench along with the other parts he'd requested.

"I won't bother summing up the wear and tear to those rifles, you've brutalised them!" exclaimed the engineer; "Take these, pay and get out, without challenging anyone else to shooting matches!"

"As you wish." Harry replied, smirking, knowing that Sid was just exasperated with him. "On a final topic, The Regiment would like to procure some further rifles, appropriately sanitized."

"Of course they would, wouldn't they. I can't get rid of you."


	8. Chapter 8

**1995, deep into eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia**

Sat at the controls of his private 'Death Star', Harry eased the throttles forward, past the firewall to full reheat. The fully-laden F-4E Phantom surged forward. The mission? Destruction.

For the previous year he'd commanded the enclave at Srebrenica against an attacking force of Bosnian Serbs as the 'defending' Dutch detachment from the United Nations, but they were inactive and weren't working against besieging force, indeed had often prevented the SAS unit from sallying out from the besieged town. Their defence had been fierce even under the watching eyes of the United Nations until finally, Harry was dismissed by the Dutch when he allowed the citizens to carry arms. The five SAS soldiers had simply vanished into the countryside, leaving behind them a trail of dead Bosnian Serbs.

Having found an abandoned WWII airbase in the countryside, Harry had got Jock, Bill, Jack and Nick together, spending about two months renovating it enough for some use. He'd warded it to hell and back, flying in his SNECMA M53 powered F-4E Phantom after it had visited Israeli Aerospace Industries to undergo a prototype modification trial they were developing for the Turkish Air Force. And while he couldn't simply wipe out the 'Republic Srpska' forces surrounding Srebrenica as they had heavy artillery and threatened to bombard the UN refugee camp nearby, it didn't mean he wasn't sortieing out and strafing convoys, wiping out tanks with barrages of rockets and dumb bombs as well as the odd one of their precious guided munitions. The Phantom, painted in the same camouflage as the Vulcan Demonstration Flight's XH558, could cross the highlands of Bosnia like a ghost, with the speed of a rocket and the same level of deadliness as a Death Star.

Snatching up the undercarriage as soon as the wings gathered enough lift to bear the weight of the aircraft, Harry kept the nose down to gather speed. He had Jack in the back, flying Weapons Systems Officer, something he'd become superbly skilled at with lots of practise. The internal fuel tanks were full, as were two drop tanks, one on the outboard pylon of each wing giving him nearly ten-thousand four-hundred litres of fuel.

The internal M61 Vulcan was fully loaded with six-hundred and forty rounds of twenty-millimetre armour-piercing-incendiary, high-explosive-incendiary and tracer rounds. The centreline pylon was occupied by an SUU-23 gun pod with a second M61 and twelve-hundred rounds. Recessed into the Phantom's fuselage were semi-active radar guided Skyflash missiles that had to be closed to a certain distance by the WSO. On the forward edge of each wing were two pylons, one on each occupied by an AGM-88 High-speed Anti Radiation Missile and one occupied by a triple-rack with three five-hundred pound Mark 82 bombs. The inboard pylon on each wing had a Bristol Aerospace CRV-7 rocket pod, each with nineteen two-point-seven-five inch rockets with some nasty warheads. To carry all this would burn fuel, so he had two drop tanks on the far ends of the wings.

Soon, they were cruising around the former Yugoslavia at about ten-thousand feet when a message buzzed across the intercom from the back.

" _Boss, I've just got a radar report, about two-thousand feet below and twenty miles bearing zero-seven-zero magnetic. Using ISAR to get a two-dimensional image... No NATO IFF... Identified, Galeb._ " said Jack.

Harry gently nosed down as his own radar screen was suddenly shown what Jack sent through to him. He got a quite nice 2D image of the aircraft from above and behind, a single jet-pipe exhaust below a straight tailplane and fin, straight wings and a wing-tip tank on each.

"Roger, following. Speed?" he said lazily.

" _Speed three-fifty knots. Sending data to your helmet display._ " replied Jack; " _Will put up ground mapping on your main screen._ "

"Copied." Harry drawled, flicking down his helmet visor.

Immediately a green diamond flicked over to below-centre left-of-centre on his display, with his altitude reading nine-thousand eight-hundred and speed six-fifty knots. Harry flicked on the master arm switch as he calculated a bit over minute and a half to be where the enemy aircraft was, then a bit under a minute to close the distance made by the Galeb during the previous minute and a half. Stupid mathematics, he'd always hated the subject.

Settling back, Harry contemplated lighting the afterburners, but decided against it as he steepened the dive after the Galeb. It was not long before the aircraft was rearing towards him. Lining up the two markers on his helmet display for each of the M61s, he enabled the ram-air turbine to turn the SUU-23 podded gun and flicked on the electric motor for the internal gun. Harry opened fired at one thousand yards, over half a mile.

Tracer and invisible bullets streamed from the Phantom and shredded the tail section of the Galeb, then poured along the fuselage, nearly sawing it in half. The port wing came off and then an incendiary round hit the fuel tank, which was nearly empty after a long attack mission. The gas fumes left in the tank were far more explosive than the liquid itself, and suddenly, with a bright light, it burst into a huge bundle of shrapnel.

" _Airfield, zero-ten-zero degrees magnetic. SAMs, look out!_ " yelled Jack from the back just as the cockpit of the Phantom lit up with warnings of an SA-2 Guideline missile.

Harry ducked the Phantom around the fireball, hoping to use it to break the lock-on as his headset began to scream. He heaved the aircraft over onto its side, moving the two throttles to different positions to tighten the turn-and-slip. Opening them fully, he dived towards the deck on full afterburner. For a moment a big concrete structure with three radar dishes appeared in his view, and next to it were three launcher rails, one empty, while two carried long, sinister white forms. Missiles with two sets of fins, probably about forty feet long.

"Guidelines! Take out that fucking radar!" Harry barked.

Jack was already on it as one of the HARM anti-radar missiles tracked down radar waves to the Fan Song radar control and launched. Harry slammed the stick back into his stomach as the missile fired, cut the engines to just above idle. Just as the aircraft was stalling, he jerked the starboard engine onto full power and pushed the stick over to port. The Phantom spun hard, then suddenly flicked inverted and he opened the remaining throttle to pull back as the S-75 Divina 'SA-2 Guideline' missile hurtled past the evading F-4.

He turned back towards the airstrip to see two further pairs of Galebs rising off the runway past the flaming wreckage and black pall of the radar anti-air installation that missile had wiped out. Sensible, there was no way that anything but numbers could do anything to the Phantom. The problem was that they were flying at right angles to the Phantom, right into its forward fire zone.

"Rockets, salvo while I shoot them up." ordered Harry.

" _Roger, rockets._ " Jack said calmly, taking over control of the CRV-7 rocket pods.

Checking the Vulcans were selected, Harry guided the Phantom in as the slow-moving jets began to retract their undercarriage. He was moving a hell of a lot faster, nine-hundred knots, well past the speed of sound. Pressing the fire button, he opened fire straight into the lead jet as the rocket pods under the wings hissed, launching a barrage of rockets straight into the rest of the formation. The ripple-fired barrage hit the middle jet, which blew up spectacularly, hitting the other aircraft with immense amounts of shrapnel. The shrapnel-peppered jet rolled over on its side, emitted a stream of flame before folding in on itself and tumbling straight on top of the final jet.

"Looks like we can call ourselves aces." Harry said cheerfully as he pulled around, observing the burning wrecks along the runway.

" _Hold on, fuel farm about eleven o'clock. Let's hit it, put a couple of craters on the runway and then bug out._ " Jack commented.

Harry leaned forward in his seat, seeing the fuel farm off, just to the left of centre. It was just a matter of a touch of rudder and then the hiss of rockets as Jack fired. He then quickly dropped two five-hundred pound bombs right in the centre of the runway. Receiving the warning beep of ordnance being launched, Harry waited a second before pulling back and climbing on full power. Normally a Phantom could manage about thirty-five to forty thousand feet a minute, but with twenty-five percent extra pounds of thrust per engine, the aircraft sky-rocketed. But first, as it crossed his windscreen, Harry fired a long burst from both guns straight into the control tower.

" _Recording footage, fuel farm destroyed, four aircraft destroyed. Runway is pitted with craters and wreckage. You hit the control tower right about two-foot off the floor and sawed across it, I'd say anyone and any equipment in there is fucked._ " Jack reported after using his onboard camera gear.

"Right, we've still got four bombs, about half of our rockets, one HARM missile, four Skyflashes plus a ton of shells." Harry added after checking the weapons systems; "Let's go and find something else to shoot up."

He let Jack take control of the flying from the rear cockpit which also had some controls for flying as well as weapons systems.

* * *

Harry was just easing into the circuit of the old airbase when activity burst over the radio.

" _MiGs! MiGs!_ " barked Jock's voice over the radio; " _Break, you've got MiGs all over you._ "

Heaving back on the stick, he climbed like a homesick angel with both engines running on afterburner. Then, as the infrared lock-on alert wailed in his headset, Harry deployed flares and banked hard right, out of his vertical climb, watching the needle shape of a MiG-21 race by. Weaving back into the combat, Harry for a moment had the MiG drifting towards his sights as it slowed towards a stall, not having the climbing power of the massive Phantom.

Both Vulcans buzzed, chewing through the MiG. Slowly, it stalled out and then imploded, no fireball or explosion, the airframe crumpled and fell out of the sky. Harry was horribly aware of the wail of a lock-on, so he turned towards the airfield, cut the afterburners, letting momentum do the job and hoping that ground clutter would foil the crude missiles being aimed at him.

Racing across the airfield at about twenty-five feet, he released the empty drop-tanks, the empty rocket packs and the empty bomb racks, sending them down onto the grass, lightening the Phantom and reducing the drag as he quarter-rolled out of the path of a missile which promptly turned straight into the ground and failed to detonate.

Then he pulled the stick back into his stomach, knowing that he had no chance of out-turning one of the MiGs. Suddenly, with the G-forces pressing both him and Jack into their seats, he rolled back into the normal plane of flight and pulled back, quarter-rolling and bringing himself to above and behind the MiG that had been closest behind him.

Out of parameters for a missile shot, it was back to gunslinging. Harry kept turning with the MiG as it lost speed through the turn and then he had the guns on the pencil-thin fuselage. His shells riddled the aircraft and the force of it drove the MiG into the ground sideways, blowing up spectacularly. Lifted up on his afterburners and the updraught from the exploded 'Fishbed' Harry easily out-climbed the remaining aircraft.

"Try and get a Skyflash shot." Harry requested Jack.

" _Yes boss._ "

He was climbing through fifteen-thousand feet with the MiG doing all it could to follow on full afterburner when suddenly it banked away and ran for home. With two of its three wingmen down and probably most of the fuel burnt, it wasn't a good time to be around. Unfortunately, Harry was quite happy to follow him with enough fuel on board.

Rolling over, Harry dived inverted, half-rolled and followed in a shallow dive. He got good tone in his headset, a buzz, as the Skyflash was locked on by the Phantom's radar. He ripple-fired two missiles at the aircraft. The first he saw quite clearly the first missile blow up in proximity to the tail, shredding the control surfaces and the afterburner section just as the second missile impacted the mid-fuselage and exploded. The MiG plummeted in two distinct pieces and a whole lot of debris.

* * *

There was a pneumatic hiss as the Phantom's brakes halted it on the stand at their hidden airstrip. As the small SAS contingent converged on the aircraft, it was noticeable that the rocket packs were absent, the bombs were all expended and their racks absent, cordite was streaked along the underside of the aircraft and that of the missiles, only half of the Skyflash missiles remained.

"Hey guys!" Jack called, jumping out of the Phantom onto the wing; "I'm calling it eight air-to-air kills, plus a load of other stuff. I got an airfield with a couple of bombs, then we went and shot up a couple of Srpskan convoys."

"Good job lads." Bill commented as Nicolas Zacarias, their new member simply smirked around his pipe; "But we did a little better. I'm afraid we found an armoured column near here and... we may have followed it to a tank park where we found that it was being used by a joint force of Srpskans and Serb Krajinas. We found an absolute treasure trove... M-84 and T-55 tanks, 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled guns, BVP M-80 and BTR-50 IFVs... Unfortunately, without you Harry around there wasn't much we could do."

"Say what?" asked Harry, climbing out of the Phantom, making sure to get his boots into the spring-loaded footholds on the side of the fuselage.

"We found a tank park with some neat equipment which we'd rather like to deprive the enemy of." Nick stated, ever understating the point; "Apart from Eastern Bloc equipment, there were some American WWII era equipment which is worth a great deal on the Western civilian market."

"I'm listening... and plotting." Harry grinned; "Let's get the weapons disarmed and get some food, then we can go and have a look at recovering this equipment."

A few hours later as darkness fell, five SAS troopers moved towards the entrance of the compound being used as a tank park. Bill moved away, quickly scaling a tree which overhung the tank park. Shinning out on a branch, he was about to drop onto the back of an M18 Hellcat tank destroyer when he spotted a group of men sat in the shadow of the vehicle behind a canvas sheet. Three, gunner, loader and driver he assumed.

Bill tapped his radio mic with a finger twice, the others would recognise the signal and halt. Silently, he unstrapped his rifle of choice for the operation, a 1942 De Lisle bolt-action .45 ACP carbine. Pushing in an M1911 magazine loaded with subsonic hollow-point expanding ammunition, he took aim at one of the shadows cast by the flickering flames of a stove under the canvas when one of the men stood up and walked out.

Tracking him, Bill watched as he moved over to the edge of the encampment and was about to undo his trouser zip when a khukri, thrown from outside the camp, split his skull. Smirking, Bill took aim again. He fired twice, cycling the bolt quickly and smoothly before the second man could raise the alarm about his dead colleague. He strapped the rifle to his back again and dropped onto the back of the M18 Hellcat and waited for the others to move in.

Having slain the approaching Serb with an easy throw, Nick cut the barbed wire surrounding the encampment and slipped in. He met up with Bill and circled in behind the entrance which was guarded by four men armed with AK-type assault rifles. As Bill lined up a shot with his De Lisle, Nick unslung his own suppressed, subsonic ammunition-loaded Heckler and Koch MP5SD6 sub-machine gun before tapping his radio mic.

At once, from outside and inside the encampment, silent, subsonic gunfire took down the sentries, allowing the other men to move in freely.

"How many." Harry whispered.

"Minimal." Bill answered; "Vehicles have gunner, loader and driver, no commander."

"Kill them." he ordered.

Looking around, Harry counted about thirty tanks. About a third of them were WWII era, M18 Hellcats, T-34s, another third were mid-early Cold War equipment, M47 Pattons, T-55s. Then the remaining tanks were Yugoslavian-made T-72s, the M-84. The latter only had a crew of two as the force weren't bothering with tank commanders, and it had an auto-loader, otherwise the others had three each. Then there were ten Gvozdikas with three crew each as they too weren't being issued with commanders and ten IFVs, each with two crew members. Total, fifty vehicles and a hundred-and-thirty men. Against five.

"Hold on... stick with me, don't start shooting." Harry amended.

He drew a Walter P9 and screwed on a suppressor, moving stealthily between vehicles, silently gesturing each trooper to the heavy machine-guns of five tanks at the centre of the park. The troopers, slightly mystified, did as he said, making sure each weapon was loaded and crouching down inside the vehicles.

Harry moved towards the tent that he assumed was the leader's tent. Outside was a single guard, smoking a cigarette. He didn't even see the glint of a suppressor around the side of an M18 Hellcat or the slight puff of smoke from a subsonic bullet whispering through the air straight at him. Quickly shifting the body under one of the tanks, Harry drew his wand and advanced into the tent, his night-vision goggles, shemaghs around his head and face giving him the appearance of some monster of the forest. The moment that he entered, the man lying on the folding bed snapped awake and sat up.

"Imperio." Harry whispered; "Rouse your men, bring them all into the clearing formed by the tanks. Do not react when the tanks open fire on your men. Order them to remain, until death."

He silently moved to a tank of his own, slipping behind the machine-gun as tired men began congregating in front of the circle of tanks occupied by SAS troopers. They would have no chance, as much chance as the hundreds of massacred civilians the five SAS men had come across, buried in mass graves or just left to rot. Yes, there was a certain personal aspect to what they were about to do to over a hundred enemy fighters.


	9. Chapter 9

**Late 1996, Ravenscroft Manor, Kent**

Harry sat on a low wall on the terrace of the manor overlooking the newly-built aircraft area, smoking a thick cuban cigar. It was a bad habit, along with the amount of whisky he could consume. Unfortunately one of the side-effects of having the tip of a basilisk fang embedded in the bone of his arm was that he couldn't get drunk enough to forget some of the sights he'd come across in Eastern Europe. It had been over two years since he'd even been in Britain, fighting a war for one ethnic group against another on behalf of a collection of countries that regarded themselves as the world's police.

It had been good experience as a soldier, he'd spent hours upon hours learning the martial arts of the Philippines from Nick Zacarias, integrating them into his mix of fighting styles. Learning to live off the land, then the establishing of a military base in Bosnia which now lay under a Fidelius charm. Then the profits were slowly coming in as he, on behalf of the five SAS troopers, sold off a number of the tanks into civilian hands, suitably deactivated, though a few he kept for himself.

A little closer to home, all but one of the fabric hangars on the estate were gone, replaced by a honey-coloured stone barn which, at one end, had a huge door opening out onto the stand, and at the far end inside, a hydraulic lift down to the cellars of the manor which were packed full of his bits of aeronautics, armour and collected small arms. The remaining fabric hangar housed the duty aircraft which he'd occasionally have to dash for when a call went out for his services.

With the musky-tasting aroma of the cigar circulating through his system, undoubtedly killing him horribly, Harry couldn't bring himself to care. He watched as a couple of surplus ex-military construction vehicles trundled past. He was intending some expansion of the estate staff and to facilitate this, had a number of quite elegant timber-framed houses built on one side of the estate with a drive linking them to the main manor complex.

He had indefinite leave until the next time there was a war and contemplated actually doing something about the dead Spitfire sat in a wing of the manor. Along with seeing if Boscombe Down would like to have a look at the handful of 'borrowed' Eastern European MiG-29s and ex-Iraqi evaluation MiG-23s that had been part of his war prizes from the former Yugoslavia.

Stubbing out the cigar and vanishing the remains with a wave of his hand, Harry was just approaching his study when his secretary, or more technically, Victor Dubose the Butler's secretary, poked his head around his door.

"Call for ya boss." said Dick Knight, an appallingly cheerful Cockney with a degree in some kind of business.

"Who?" Harry asked, sighing.

"Some random bird, sounds cute over the blower." he replied.

"Oh for heaven's sake." groaned Harry; "Did she, for instance, give you her name?"

"Something like Nadey Falk." Dick said, horribly mangling the name

"Forward the call to my study." Harry ordered making his way to the door of his own rooms.

Throwing himself into his chair, he eyed the bottle of Drambuie honeyed whisky and the box of cigars as he propped his boots up on the desk. Picking up the phone, he caught the tail end of Dick chatting to the person on the other line.

" _Boss-man should be on the other end soon. Just be patient with him, as far as I know he hasn't got laid in-_ "

"Dick, shut up." Harry ordered, a hint of annoyance in his voice; "I believe I told you yesterday not to speculate about my lack of a love life."

" _Shutting up now._ " said Dick, putting the phone down.

"Why I ever hired that man..." Harry sighed, knowing that on some level it was quite amusing.

" _Comic relief?_ " asked Nadya; " _He wasn't the person around the last time I phoned... and apparently neither were you. The man I spoke to, Victor or something said he had no idea if you were still alive._ "

"My sat-phone ceased working through wear and tear..." Harry said, forgetting to mention that it had been between his body armour and an Dragunov SVD's bullet. "Anyway, how are you?"

" _Not bad, after our chat at Fairford I put my head down at das gymnasium and charged at the work. I graduated a couple of months ago with, got straight one grades, like A grades in Britain, the subjects were English, German, History, Geography and Mathematics. Anyway, I nearly encountered you a few years ago. George Roberts who you met at Portsmouth is a retired British Army of the Rhine soldier who stayed back, he taught me to speak native-fluency English._ "

"I did recognise the voice, but I had to go before I could talk to you. Anyway, not bad grades... and I've always been a bit annoyed that you seem to speak better English than half of Britain's population. And better than I can speak German." Harry chuckled; "So you're still hell bent on the armed forces?"

" _You bet._ " she replied immediately; " _I tried signing up for pilot training but a senior officer came and laughed at me. I was two seconds away from forcibly sticking his head up his ass when he left._ "

"Have you got much flying in?" he asked; "Because sometimes there are back-routes into various armed forces.

" _Quite a bit, I sold my glider for a fair bit of money and found a man with a French-built Messerschmitt '108 which he told me that I could have if I paid for the removal. It wasn't in great condition but I've spent most of my glider cash on getting it flying. I quite often spend a weekend mucking around with it, going around the country._ " Nadya commented; " _What do you mean 'back-routes'?_ "

"Hmm... I'll have to drop in at some point. I've actually got leave until someone decides we need to start another war, which is nice." Harry commented; "What I mean by back routes is that, for instance, how close are you to Mr. Roberts?"

" _Legally, he's my guardian and the closest thing I've ever had to a father._ " she asked with no little sarcasm.

"Indeed." Harry mused; "If he were to legally adopt you, and if he's retained his British citizenship then you'd be entitled to such citizenship yourself without the residence in the country stipulation... and therefore membership of the armed forces." it wasn't actually quite like that, but he was interested to see her in a fast jet after having dug up her pilot's license examiner's notes. After all, he had quite a few aircraft and only himself as a pilot.

" _Well, I'm going to be at Celle Air Base in three day's time, it's half-civilian, half-military. If you can wrangle an invitation to land, and wrangle an aircraft... let's say a Supermarine Spitfire..._ " Nadya hinted.

"Ugh, actually that aircraft is sat at the back of my garage awaiting me taking the engine off, making sure there is no debris damage, replacing the starter motor, replacing the forward fuel tank, uninhibiting the engine and putting it back on the aircraft, which I haven't got round to."

" _Do you have a working aircraft?_ " she asked.

"Yah, though I haven't actually flown it in a couple of years, I had it run up earlier so I need to fly it anyway." Harry shrugged; "It also has a back seat, so if you want a ride..."

" _I might take you up on that._ "

* * *

 **Late 1996, Ravenscroft Manor, Kent**

Harry, having been thrown out of his bed at an ungodly hour by even his standards due to some pretty nasty memories coming to the surface again, ate and headed down to the cellar. Lined up in a smart row next to the hydraulic lift up to the barn, with all the necessary equipment were the off-duty duty aircraft. His collection of working F-4 Phantoms numbered three, as did his collection of F-105 Thunderchiefs, one not serviceable yet, one on duty in the fabric hangar and one by the lift. Then his Super Sabre and Mirage 2000 were also by the lift. Armaments for those were kept in a magically reinforced bunker at the far end of the cellar.

Parked further down the cellar were the jets which had yet to be pressed into service. Several souped-up F-101 Voodoos, a Starfighter, Swedish Saab Drakens and Viggens, former Indonesian Avon Sabres and an English Electric Lightning, as well as further Phantoms he was simply hoarding for the sake of hoarding. Then there were the working hobby aircraft, the Sea Fury and the two Dominican Republic P-51 Mustangs he'd bothered to unpack from their crates.

Ignoring them, he headed straight for the row of hobby aircraft that didn't work. Next to a sinister-looking Saab Viggen and a pocket-rocket English Electric Lightning there was the Spitfire that he was intending on working on. One of the bits of kit he had was a brilliant toolkit supplied with Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlins, and though not all, most of the tools were interchangeable. Opening it up, Harry began the laborious process of fixing the Spit.

He began opening up the panels around the engine nacelle before dragging over the small crane to take the weight of the propeller and mechanism as he slid it off the drive shaft before preparing to release the engine from its mounts and lift it out.

Taking a deep gulp of coffee, Harry sighed in satisfaction. He'd taken the Spitfire out onto the stand and fired it up after a full engine removal, starter motor replacement, re-affixing of the engine and connecting up all the fuel lines, hydraulics and other pipes. Taking a look around the rest of the equipment, he made a mental note to contact Saab and see if they'd mind doing up his Draken and Viggen, two of the most evil-looking jets ever to leave a factory. Otherwise, he had a few Eastern Bloc jets, but those were in the custody of Boscombe Down, though they let him fly them when he was in the country.

Then, reduced to monolithic parts, stacked around the far end of the cellar was an Avro Shackleton MR.3. The Viper turbojets and the Rolls-Royce Griffons sat on trolleys. The fuselage lay on a set of specially-made supports, with the wings, tailfins and planes sat against the wall. It was a knackered old machine, but the galley still worked and for that little he still kept it, and eventually might get it going.

Contemplating what to do, Harry considered flying over to the ancestral fortress in the Cambrian Mountains and poking around Charlus Potter's collection. Old Man Potter had been a highly paranoid man after the end of the Second World War. He'd seen how Germany had rebelled under the sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles, resulting in the Second World War, after which, he watched as the Anglo-Russian alliance fractured. Over the next thirty years he built up a private army along with the equipment for them, from fighter aircraft to old tanks.

His grandson was only adding to it as various air forces around the world continued retiring Second and Third Generation jet fighters plus his illicit acquiring of enemy equipment.

Eventually, having downed one cup of coffee and made another in the galley of the Shackleton, Harry headed out to the firing range at one corner of the estate. It did not bode well if he lost any of his skill with a gun, though that was unlikely after years of living and breathing with one at hand at all times. He grabbed a box of .45 ACP and his favoured practise pistol as he didn't like to cause undue wear to his prized Kimber M45.

* * *

 **Late 1996, Bradbury Lines, Hereford  
**

Sat at the bar of the Sergeant's Mess at Bradbury Lines, Harry, Jock, Bill, Jack and Nick sat and chatted over glasses of the Scottish honey liquor, Drambuie. They had all been surprised when the reclusive Filipino had fitted in so well to Section Five after a great deal of time relegated to training duties, but after a while getting reacclimatised to combat missions, he'd begun to be a part of the team.

"And anyway, this girlie cop asks me 'what, do you think you are some bad-ass SAS covert operator'. She shouldn't have stopped me and not expected me to be an utter bastard. So, I decided the best way to dent her ego was to be truthful." Nick finished his monologue.

"Talking of girls, anyone in your life Harry?" asked Jock.

"I thought I made it abundantly clear after you dragged me to that Virginia Beach nudist place that girlfriends are for people with social lives and that social lives are for people without anything useful to do with their time." Harry rolled his eyes, taking a sip of his Drambuie; "Damn, look at us, reduced to sitting around, getting plastered when we ought to be doing something. Jack, you've got the deployments memorised, is there anything interesting going on?"

"Nothing really, The Suits don't want us in Ireland because they think we'll upset the peace process by gunning down any IRA member we catch." Jack yawned; "Ah come on, cheer up, it can't be long before we decide we don't like Saddam for the nth time this decade and we can go and kill him. Boss, you've got the intelligence reports, anyone in particular that's likely to piss us off?"

"Saddam's still killing his own people with chemical weapons, Sierra Leone's a fucking mess,the peace talks over the Former Yugoslavia are horribly unstable and I'll be too if someone doesn't pour me another one." replied Harry; "Anyway, I'm going to speak to the boss, see if I can get a while off, I haven't had any proper leave in a fucking age."

"Have you still got that open offer to join the Reds?" asked Bill.

"Huh, good point." Harry commented, accepting another glass of Drambuie; "They'll be finishing their season and preparing to head out to Akrotiri for the winter. Would be pretty nice, I'll see if I can get on the team."

"I'd hold out on that." said a voice from the doorway, causing the five SAS troopers to spin around and Harry to draw his Kimber M45 in a lightning fast move; "Woah, hold it boys."

"You really haven't got the fucking idea of this place have you?" Harry growled, lowering his pistol from pointed at the head of the new SAS Commanding Officer.

"I'll learn." he shrugged; "But right now I've got minimal use for you lot, but a few postings have come through that myself and Lander at MI5 have agreed on. Potter, correct me if I'm wrong but are you F-15 and '16 qualified?"

"Mhmm, directly after the Gulf War I went over to America to Nellis and the USAF Weapons School." Harry nodded, sitting back down and pouring himself another glass of Drambuie; "Full combat qualification on the 'Hog, the Eagles and the Viper. I also brought my Phantom out and got a couple of the old guys to show me over the combat skills for her. Plus I managed to get familiarisation on most of the other aircraft which I did during my free weekends."

"That would explain this." grunted the new 'Lion'; "There is an immediate posting for you lot to Israel for a stint of training, then Potter, you've been posted to _Jagdgeschwader_ Seventy-Three, Steinhoff, at Rostock-Laage, pack your shit. You're going to be flying the MiG-29 boyo."

"I flew a number of times in mock combat against Steinhoff before he passed on." Harry noted absently; "How long's the posting in Israel going to be?"

"Couple of months, until the end of November. Then Germany for twelve months from the commencing of training operations in January." was the reply; "McCabe, when he's in Germany, you're going with him as intelligence analysis on the aircraft type which the RAF want desperately. Apparently you've both flown Red aircraft."

"Yup, we've flown MiG '15s, '17s, '19s, '21s, '23s, '25s and '29s, mainly ones we stole off the Yugoslavs, the Iraqis and the Somalis." Jock said, smirking around a cigar; "What about the other three of us, we're a team."

"After Israel, you three are going to be dispatched for training by and to train the Deltas at Fort Bragg while the other two play with their new aeroplanes." said Lion.

"Okey-dokey, now shove off." Harry grumbled; "I can still remember my name and that annoys me."


	10. Chapter 10

_For the purposes of this story, Harry was born in '75 and Ziva in '78._

 **1996, Israel**

Four khaki-painted Bowler Tomcat four-by-fours roared to a halt outside the main building in the moderately large compound of buildings on the edge of the Negev Desert. The cars had come originally with four-litre TVR V8s producing two-hundred and forty horsepower. A higher performance variant made two-hundred and seventy-five. However, they'd got hold of four BMW S62 five-litre V8s, fitted them with twin superchargers for six-hundred horsepower.

Very potent, and exactly what Section Five needed.

A number of people piled out of the buildings as the four cars roared into the compound and halted. They were wearing khaki trousers and shirts with epaulettes, and yet with no insignia. Then the four-by-fours disgorged their occupants. Wearing scruffy jeans, cargo trousers and t-shirts, they looked like any group of civilians.

" _Shalom_ Benny." nodded the leader of the group of arrivals as one of the occupants of the compound approached him. A short, stocky man, tanned and bald as an egg grinned as he shook the hand of the other man, six-foot tall, with a messy mop of black hair, slightly pale.

Though he looked like an ordinary civilian, the leader of the arrivals was a twenty-one year-old captain of the Parachute Regiment, on permanent attachment to the Special Air Service. The second man was the commanding officer of Sayeret Matkal, a Lieutenant Colonel who had fought for his country for decades, and had experienced some of Israel's bloodiest conflicts, surviving where so many others hadn't.

"Harry, it is good to see you again." replied the Israeli, a beaming smile on his face; "Your men?"

"Section Five. Myself, Jock, Bill, Jack and Nick." the Englishman replied, gesturing to each of the men. They were fairly similar, not massively tall or bulky, but still muscular enough and tall enough, a couple of them unshaven, one completely bald and one obviously of Pacific extraction.

" _Na'im me'od._ " the Israeli said to the SAS Section Five operatives, the Hebrew equivalent to 'pleased to meet you'. "Now come, I must show you around."

* * *

"And we spend usually an hour a day on the range, perfecting our shooting, often in bad weather, rain, hail. You do get such weather even out here." said Benny as he showed the group of SAS operatives around. Around half-a-dozen people were shooting on the outdoor range, including two young women who couldn't have been even twenty.

"I'll admit I'm surprised that you have women in the unit, that's not something most special forces allow." Harry noted with a slightly raised eyebrow.

"I prefer to judge people on their abilities and potential, not their gender." Benny replied after a searching look; "I hope that won't be a problem?"

"Don't worry, I'm in agreement with you." Harry chuckled.

"Tell you what, I'll bet she can shoot as straight as any of you." offered Benny, gesturing to the young woman who was firing short bursts from an M4.

"Deal." agreed Harry; "Hundred yards, see who can put the most bullets on target with the most accuracy."

Benny rattled off a sentence in Hebrew, causing the young woman to look up and give Harry a challenging stare. He simply raised an eyebrow. Stare down true evil a couple of times before you're even fifteen and a look from a woman five years his junior wasn't exactly scary.

"Ziva agrees." said Benny, nearly bouncing over, rubbing his hands together in glee. "What shall we play for?"

"Eternal smugness?" Harry offered, having his hand wrung immediately.

Lighting a cigar, Harry watched with a certain respect as Ziva reloaded her M4 carbine and opened fire, slight hesitations between shots to correct her aim. Soon the thirty-round box magazine had been poured down-range with a fairly small spread. He raised an eyebrow before glancing to Jock who was carrying a large black bag on his back.

"The Sterling please Jock." he requested.

The bag made a fairly loud noise as he dumped it on the table, unsurprising given the fact that there were five long rifles packed inside it. The SAS trooper removed a strange-looking rifle with a cylindrical stock, a thirty-round magazine from a 7.62mm Bren gun and a Browning M2-like sleeve to about halfway up the barrel from the magazine. One of the prototype Sterling battle rifles, a basic but effective weapon.

Harry took it, flicked up the iron-sights which were held on by bands around the barrel, charged the rifle and opened fire. Taking just a moment between each shot to adjust his aim, he put thirty rounds downrange, obliterating the black circle in the centre of the target but leaving the rest unscathed.

"I'd say that's on target." he commented, dropping the magazine and taking a puff on his cigar; "I'll admit though precision shooting isn't my strong point."

"Then, I would like a rematch or two." the young woman said in heavily-accented English with a challenging grin.

The SAS troopers earned a death-glare from their commander as they whistled appreciatively.

"It would be interesting." Harry replied with a non-answer.

* * *

The air was tense in the helicopter. The SAS men looked completely at ease, Harry had used a carabina to hook himself to an internal strut in the Blackhawk and was leaning out of the open door behind the Israeli door-gunner. They were flying in formation with another Sikorsky UH-60 'Yanshuf' Blackhawk over the rich, green land in the north of Israel near the border with Lebanon.

Early that afternoon, the Sayeret Matkal base had received orders to deploy. A column of insurgents had been spotted crossing the border and The Unit had been ordered to take them out. When they'd found out there was a good fight stirring, the SAS men hadn't taken no for an answer and now were in one of the two helicopters, the changes quite noticeable.

They usually wore scruffy jeans, cargo trousers, t-shirts and other civilian clothing. Now, each and every one of them was clad in the most modern multicam clothes, wearing a flak jacket and a set of Level IV rated body armour. Harry had a pair of ginunting short-swords sheathed by his side, a MEUSOC Colt M1911 'borrowed' off a USMC Gunnery Sergeant on his thigh, sharing its holster with a Gerber , the pouches on his armour filled with magazines for his Imbel M964A1 PARA-FAL. In the back of his belt was a second Colt M1911, a Coonan .357 model, along with a karambit claw knife.

Bill, a burly corporal, was sat in one of the canvas seats next to Harry, flicking through a classic car magazine, his custom M14 draped across his lap and a Saiga-12K automatic shotgun slung at his side. Nick Zacarias, their stealth specialist had an MP5SD6 suppressed sub-machine gun and a long Kami combat wakizashi on his lap, while he was plugged into a discman playing Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E-minor. Finally, there was Jock McCabe, Harry's right-hand man and their sniper, who had an Accuracy International L115A3 Arctic Warfare Super Magnum leaning on his left elbow as he calmly completed a page of crosswords and sudoku puzzles in a book he carried with him.

"Bored." announced Harry, leaning out of the door.

"You would be." Bill muttered.

Harry suddenly raised his his FAL to his shoulder, eye glued to the scope.

"Huh, ruined building, looks like some kind of castle."

"That's Montfort Castle." Ziva stated.

"Might walk up there whenever I've got some time." Harry commented, making a mental note to do so.

"How the hell are you so damned calm?!" she demanded as Jock triumphantly raised a fist as he finished a sudoku puzzle.

"Practise, experience, a sense of obligation to my fellow soldiers, family and country." he shrugged; "Don't you have family you'd kill and die for?"

"My fellow soldiers are, for the most-part, my family." Ziva replied in slightly halting English; "My sister, my mother."

"Not your father?" asked Jock who'd been listening in.

"He's distant." said Ziva sharply.

"Huh, I can believe that of Eli David, Jock, don't you remember that snide bastard who was leading the Mossad hit team in Iraq during '91." Jack added; "If I recall you broke his nose."

"I wasn't aware that my family was up for discussion." Ziva said coldly.

"She's right you two, shut it." Harry ordered, racking the charging handle on his FAL; "Besides, we're only a couple of minutes from the drop zone."

She nodded thankfully to him, charging her SR-25 Designated Marksman's Rifle. With the assault force in two ten-passenger helicopters, they were split into four teams of five to go after the incoming insurgents. To make up the numbers, she'd been attached to the SAS team, which wasn't bad as Harry had been the one teaching her to speak English and was a 'friend' as far as could be in a line of work such as their's.

* * *

The commandos encircled the clearing they had landed in, across the Lebanese border. Checking the perimeter, the two aircraft lifted off, one dipping its nose and moving forward when suddenly, a rocket came up out of the trees and struck the tail of the second Blackhawk which was just turning in the air to follow.

The sirens in the cockpit could be heard from the ground as the aircraft spun repeatedly, descending. It plunged into the forest, rolled over on its side, thrashing itself to bits before exploding. One of the rotor blades hurlted out of the wreckage and drove right into the second helicopter, sending it plummeting out of the air. Harry and Jock dashed towards the nearest of the helicopters which had simply rolled on its side after crashing, not exploding.

Jack pulled Ziva to behind a rocky outcrop while Nick covered them. They kept their guns trained towards the crashed helicopter as the two soldiers dashed over to it.

"Axe!" Harry barked, seeing one of the pilots moving.

Jock pulled out his tactical tomahawk, throwing it to Harry who drove the back-spike into the windscreen, which, already cracked, shattered. Jock hauled the pilot, who was jabbering away in Hebrew, from the cockpit and slung him over his shoulder as Harry broke the other windscreen. The co-pilot's neck was at an odd angle and he could already tell he was dead. One of the door gunners was crawling towards the commandos, legs broken having been thrown clear while the other had been crushed under the aircraft.

"We need to blow up the aircraft and get out of here." grunted the Sayeret commander who had dashed over to the SAS men, bringing his own four men with him to make up ten of them a and the wounded pilot who had been knocked out by morphine.

"I've got a load of Semtex if it helps." Jack volunteered; "But I'd prefer to get the bodies free, it could mess up the demolition."

Harry gave him a long look, knowing he was talking bullshit, but neither of them wanted to blow up the Israeli helicopter crews in the process of destroying the helicopter.

"Nick, think you can handle that." Harry asked.

"Mhmm." the Filipino nodded just as a stream of tracer screamed over their heads from behind.

The ten men broke around the back of the outcrop to shelter from the bursts of automatic gunfire. Too slow for one of them, the radio operator who took multiple bursts of automatic gunfire and collapsed on the sandy ground.

"GO!" Harry barked, picking off an insurgent with a single round.

He grabbed one of the grenades from his belt and sent it flying in a long arc to the far side of the clearing where the insurgents who had them pinned down were. The weapon detonated, sending a deadly wave of shrapnel out, allowing Nick and Jack to make a dash for the helicopter. Ziva popped her head around the rock, rifle barking twice as two suicide bombers ran across the clearing. Her shots were perfectly placed, taking them both down with shots to the head.

"I thought we could do with all the extra explosives we can get." she explained, sitting back against the rock next to Harry as he mentally counted down for a few seconds, allowing some further insurgents to leave cover.

He stuck his head and rifle around the rock, allowing Ziva to shift up and give him room to fire. The FAL picked off one insurgent at the treeline when a second ran towards Harry. He fired straight at the man's chest, only to hear the distinctive noise of bullet on body-armour. The dilated pupils of the attacker's eyes became apparent when he lunged at Harry. The bayonet on the end of Harry's FAL parried away an AK bayonet and lodged itself in the attacker's throat followed by a second bullet.

The Israelis were in a vicious, bloody stalemate. They had nowhere to withdraw to, but plenty of guts and guns to defend their position with. However, there was a distant rumble that caused the SAS men to freeze.

"Asaf!" Harry yelled at the Israeli commander; "Split up, get out of here. They're bringing up armour. We'll provide a rear guard, get out!"

Jack was already unpacking an M72 Light Anti-Tank Weapon when a BMP-1 barged through the trees. The gun was traversing towards their cover when he popped his head around the rock and put a rocket straight into the fuel tank. The wave of heat was immense as the blast ripped the vehicle apart. But still there was the rumbling of further armoured vehicles approaching. How the bloody hell the insurgents had got hold of these, none of them had any idea.

"Get them out of here!" Harry repeated; "Get us backup."

The SAS men allowed further terrorists come into the open before laying down accurate bursts of fire. The Israelis broke for the treeline behind them and melted away, leaving behind belts of ammunition and the feeds they'd hacked off the crashed 'hawks, thousands of rounds. Harry grinned, lots of ammunition, just them and the enemy... and Ziva.

"I thought-" he began.

"Yes, well I couldn't give a shit what you thought." she stated, adjusting the scope on her rifle; "If you think I'm letting you lot get killed alone then you're far more stupid than I gave you credit for. What have we got?"

"Four M72s unexpended, half a dozen L9 bar mines, our rifles, pistols and knives. And a lot of ammunition." Jock replied.

"Cover me!" yelled Nick, opening fire as he broke for the treeline.

Harry grinned as the Filipino melted into the foliage and flitted around. The exchanges of fire became sporadic as the bodies began to pile up, then the armour came up. Nick dropped back into the hollow they'd dug out behind the rock, smirking.

"You put down some of those mines?" he asked.

A series of huge explosions was the answer.

"Less talk, more kill." Ziva ordered.

"Yes ma'am." Harry mockingly saluted, pitching a grenade at the trees where burst of gunfire were originating from.

* * *

Sayeret Matkal teams circled the bloodbath clearing. They were hungering for revenge, several of their number and their aviation support teams were dead, while several of their SAS colleagues and friends were missing with one of their own number. The bodies were strewn around the area, with three scorched, burnt-out armoured vehicles to balance the two wrecked choppers.

Cartridge casings were piled high as Sergeant Nicolas Zacarias and Corporal William de Mornay had reported, but of the remaining SAS men, Staff Sergeant Andrew McCabe, Corporal John Knight and Captain Hadrian Potter and their own soldier, there was no sign.

"Give me some news." snapped the anonymous-looking man in the suit who had demanded to come along with the mission.

"Sir?" asked the soldier, looking to his commander.

"This is Officer David, head of the Middle East Special Operations desk at Mossad and _Segen Mishne_ David's father. Answer him." was the order.

"A wheeled vehicle, a truck, was in the vicinity. Tracks indicated two people being dragged into it. Several tracks escaped, we don't know where to." reported the soldier.

"I know what they'll be doing." drawled Bill, smoking a cigarette and looking utterly calm despite a deep desire to kill someone.

"What!" demanded David.

"They'll be pulling some hare-brained scheme which will have zero chance of working and then make it work." Bill replied, flicking his cigarette into the sand and screwing his boot heel on it; "Don't ask anything more than that because I have no idea what that scheme will be, they generally make them up as they go along."

"Damn you." the Mossad officer cursed.

His phone rang suddenly, interrupting the relative quiet of the examination of the site of the battle.

"David." he barked.

" _Officer David, you asked for any reported sightings of McCabe and Knight. We have seen them._ " came a calm voice over the phone, speaking English and easily heard.

"You are?" David demanded.

" _Flying Officer Andy Maximillian, Royal Air Force on exchange to 105 Squadron at Tel Nof airbase._ " came the reply.

"Report!"

" _They've just been seen at the base stealing one of our Phantoms. Thought you'd like to know. At the speed they left, they shouldn't be too far away._ " was the smug comment before the phone line died.

"They stole a fucking Phantom?" Nick asked incredulously.

"Jock and Harry both like flying the Phantom and Jack likes blowing shit up with it."

"They still stole a fucking Phantom."

* * *

Harry leaned back against the wall of the cell he'd been thrown in with Ziva, his eyes half-closed. He had a look of complete relaxation to him that unnerved the guards even more than the shark-like smile he'd given them as he was bundled with her out of the truck into the building with the cells.

"Well, where's the big plan?" demanded Ziva, staring incredulously at her cellmate.

"On its way." Harry said, idly poking one of the soles of his boot.

"Really?" she asked sarcastically; "If you can't see we're both locked in a cell built from pre-cast concrete. The door is fully metal with locks only accessible from the outside."

Harry ignored her, cocking his head to one side as there was a distant rumble of thunder. He stood up and walked over to the high, barred window to look outside. The time was late evening, and the sky was completely clear. The thunder was not of any natural kind, it was actually a sound he recognised well.

"Right, time to bust out of here." he announced.

"Really?" Ziva repeated sarcastically, not bothering to even stand up.

"Or I could leave you behind." Harry replied, lifting his leg up against the wall and poking the sole of his boot again.

"If you've got a way out." she said, raising an eyebrow and looking pointedly at the metal door.

"It isn't exactly subtle." Harry admitted.

"Really?"

Harry glared at her for a moment before striding over to the door and began pounding at it, bellowing in a 'Regimental Sergeant Major on the parade ground' voice.

"YOU HORRIBLE LOT! GET MOVING! OVER HERE, NOW! ONE-TWO-ONE-TWO! FASTER!"

He then stepped back and waited.

Suddenly the door slammed open and two guards barged in, levelling AK-47 assault rifles at him. Harry's move was mindbogglingly fast. In a moment, he'd twisted one of the AKs from the grip of its owner, wrapping the strap around his throat and opened fire straight into the other guard. Finishing off the first with a vicious twist, snapping his neck, Harry kicked the other AK to Ziva, who, despite her misgivings being voiced by the siren blaring, snatched it up and followed Harry out.

Moving smoothly out into the corridor into a kneeling position, a cluster of bullets cracked past his head as Harry once again fired his newly-acquired AK. The insurgents at the end of the corridor collapsed, and were quickly downgraded in his mind from 'annoyance' to 'supply of ammunition'.

A couple of magazines of ammunition were looted and Ziva stopped to grab an SVD from a rack and slung it around her back as they burst through the door from the cell-block to the courtyard of the compound. They quickly spotted gunmen piling out of another building's door, but in their rush, they were tripping and barging into each-other. As Harry and Ziva broke for the truck that had brought them in, they fired again and again until their guns were empty.

Harry grinned as he found that the vehicle still had their looted gear in the cab. But, half asleep, tumbling out of the cab were two guards. The gun was empty so he decided to go in with his bare hands. The first strike was a brutal blow to the chest, followed by an elbow strike to the temple. The first guard hit the ground, hard. Harry followed up with a neck-snapping stomp before disposing of the second guard through the simple expedient of grabbing his chin and shoulder, propelling them in opposite direction.

He was immensely glad that their kit was still inside the weapons carrier. The last he'd heard was bursts of rapidly-spoken Arabic arguing over what to do with it and someone deciding that nobody would have it until they had made a decision. Saved by bureaucracy. The keys were lying on the dashboard, so moments later, the big Ural truck was racing out of the compound, even as Ziva was climbing in and slamming her door.

"They'll hunt us." she stated.

"Undoubtedly. I've got a couple of trump cards though." Harry stated, suddenly turning north; "We vanish for a couple of days in the wilderness."

"And the other?" Ziva asked, giving him a look of new-found respect.

"That." Harry said, pointing out of the window as an F-4 Phantom let loose a barrage of gunfire over their heads at pursuing forces; "I believe a couple of my colleagues may have borrowed one of your air force's Phantoms."

* * *

In the shelter of the back of the old Ural, Harry's right eye flickered open as he heard a snap outside. Ziva was curled into his side, fast asleep. The warmth of the Lebanese days was, at night, replaced by bitter cold and, sparsely equipped as they were, sleeping together had been simple common sense. Then as the shock caught her with the end of what was her combat debut, the emotional intimacy had been a stabilising factor, and the sleeping together had become 'sleeping' together.

Not that he minded, nor Ziva. It was all he could do to make her first few experiences as pleasurable as possible. However, such thoughts were pushed aside as he slipped out of the canvas structure on the back of the Ural truck, not out of the back, but through a loose part on the side. Ziva woke up as he moved, freezing for a moment as he gestured to the outside, while reaching under the seat cushion they used as a pillow for his pistol.

A minute later, Harry was crouched in the brush as a figures approached with rifles carrying flashlights. He silently eased back the hammer on his MEUSOC Kimber M45 1911, when suddenly a flashlight was turned on him. Reflexively, Harry fired three shots, all of which missed as the target threw himself out of the way.

"Check fire!" roared Jock's recognisable stentorian voice.

Harry slowly lowered his pistol as lights began to survey the area. Jack was frozen with Ziva holding a pistol to his head, while Bill was on the ground, aiming at Harry who had just shot at him. Jock and Nick were lowering their weapons from aiming at the two.

"Oh buggery." Bill muttered loudly.

"No time for arguments, we need to get going. The remainder of those insurgents are tracking you." Jock barked; "I brought up a couple of armed Humvees."

"Right, Ziva, let Jack go." Harry ordered; "Nick, get our kit from the Ural and set the thing on fire."

"Yes boss." came the reply.

"How far are the cars?" demanded Harry.

"Half a mile." Jock replied.

"Right, let's get moving."

As the pair of armed Humvees roared onto the road south towards the border, they saw a flight of AH-1 Cobras heading in the opposite direction to cover their escape.

* * *

Ziva sighed as she sat on the couch of Harry's apartment in the resort town of Eilat on the Red Sea. She wondered how much of his insistence to remain here during the debriefing period after the debacle was out of spite for her father, to whom Harry had taken an instant dislike when she'd briefly described her childhood.

"Hey sweetie." Harry said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she relaxed into his side, grabbing a half-drunk bottle of cold beer from the table.

"Hey Harry." Ziva yawned.

Since the debacle, during the debriefing period, her father had promised Harry a favour if he did what he could to teach Ziva. The pair had immediately realised that this was part of Eli's agenda to recruit his daughters to Mossad. Ziva had agreed with Harry to go ahead with the teaching, because if she was to get caught up in her father's plots, then she wanted the best chance of survival.

Her exhaustion was mostly to blame on relentless hours with Captain Hadrian Potter, the cold, clinical and vicious fighter that Harry could become in an instant. Bruised and battered from fighting with him for hours, though he was increasingly taking hits, he'd help her out, massaging and healing what he could, partly so that she could keep going every day.

"It's so... different... to what I'm used to, here." Harry commented, staring out of the great window over the port; "Arid sand to our east and west, water to our south. I'm used to working in European countries, greenery, jagged mountains. Don't get me wrong, I like it here, it's just not what I'm used to."

"What's your home like?" Ziva asked.

"Home... I dunno if it's entirely a home, I'm always moving from place to place, but when I'm off duty I have a small estate in south-east England. Lots of fields, bit of forest, the drive's long enough for me to fly a small airliner off. I like it, quite a lot of wildlife, with wild deer, various birds. Even a small river, ever seen an otter?" Harry replied.

"No, I can't say I have." said Ziva.

"I like it there, it's practical for my work life, and I can get away from work there when I want to. Or at least I can escape from there to somewhere far away." Harry laughed, nicking his bottle back from Ziva.

"You know this can't last." she said sadly.

"Yeah." he replied, taking a gulp of beer before passing the bottle back to her; "I figured we'd make the best of the time we have, you've got a while left of your IDF time before you go on to whatever you choose to do next. I've heard rumours around SAS HQ that I've got another posting coming up."

"Maybe if we're both alive by the time the world has chewed us up and spat us out, we can look each-other up." Ziva shrugged, before stiffening slightly; "I have a sister, I fear for her safety. She has no interest in Mossad, she wants to study art, music and all sorts of things not involving knives and international espionage..."

"I won't force her to leave Israel." Harry warned; "Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty _nor_ security."

"I know." she sighed; "I will talk to her. But if she agrees, I will need your help."

"Ziva. If you ever need my help..." Harry trailed off, allowing her to understand; "Even just get in here, you know the codes. This has a straight-through telephone to my home in England, and if I'm not there and it's an emergency, someone will probably be able to get hold of me."

"Thanks." Ziva murmured, burrowing into his shoulder.

In an uncertain and ever-changing world of shadows, it was friends, and more, in the case of Harry, who you could rely on to fight at your side in any situation that were so valuable. And sometimes just having friends made life so much easier.


	11. Chapter 11

Harry had a headache. Maybe the drinking the previous afternoon had been a bad idea. The roar of the impressively powerful Rolls-Royce Avon engine even more so. Having woken up with a horrible headache, Harry had limped to his car, awake and sober but hungover. Leaving with Jack to the airfield so he could drive it back to Bradbury Lines when Harry himself was overseas. Between them, they got the Hawker Sea Fury running and Harry departed for Kent where he quickly packed what gear he needed in the back, heading for Germany.

His headache had suddenly been exacerbated by an order to make an emergency return to the airfield from whence he'd flown and get back to Credenhill. It had turned out that a group of Death Eater wannabes had attacked a local pub in which another SAS troop had been getting thoroughly plastered. Harry had been delayed with debriefing while someone managed to cover up the nine heavily knifed, shot and beaten dead wizards, and he'd quietly returned to the Sea Fury and attempted to sprint it out of British airspace and radio range before he could be accosted again.

Unfortunately the day got worse when suddenly, the fighter decided to loose all hydraulic pressure as, circling around south of London airspace, as he raced past the late Tommy Sopwith's magnificent Horsley Towers. With an emergency hydraulic reserve in the back, he got the machine to Ravenscroft and lowered the undercarriage, consuming all of the emergency reserve. It meant however, that he had no flaps.

Getting down successfully, with a landing slot at Celle at a set time approaching fast, he needed to get there faster. Sat in the hanger with all the checks up until the start already done was a newly acquired Swiss two-seat Hawker Hunter. Grabbing his jet flying gear, he worked out that at the speed he'd be going, there was enough time for him to grab a coffee. Naturally, as was the wont of Murphy's law, his cup of coffee had delayed him longer than he'd expected.

Now in a shallow dive, screaming up the lowest part of the North Sea towards Den Helder in Holland, he had the Hunter through the sound barrier. He'd have to slow to subsonic for Holland, and turn east to head towards Celle.

* * *

 **Late 1996, Celle Airbase, Germany.**

The tanker drove away from the jet parked on the stand at the airbase. The aircraft was gloss-black, an ex-Swiss aircraft painted in the colours of the Royal Air Force's legendary Black Arrows, but with a snarling wolf's mouth added to the nose ahead of the twin ADEN cannon. The side-by-side cockpit was wider than most aircraft, but allowed equal view to either pilot.

"You ready?" Harry asked his German friend.

"Would it help if I said yes?" Nadya laughed nervously, double-checking her anti-G suit for the nth time.

"Come on, jump in." urged Harry; "If you're nervous, this has got the power to get you out of trouble, and I'll be next to you. It's good fun to throw around the sky."

Still nervous, she climbed into the cockpit and Harry dropped in next to her. He disconnected the lock for the braking parachute and the safety pins for the emergency backup oxygen. He then checked the radar set's circuit breakers before turning the electricity test switch to 'Normal Flight'.

"Strap in, pull the pin out to arm your ejector seat and adjust the rudder pedals." Harry ordered; "Then connect your oxygen mask, your g-suit and the radio."

Having checked that she had done it as instructed, Harry gave her an encouraging grin as he turned on the aircraft's Battery Master Switch. A few checks on pressures and a test of the radar set followed before he turned the Battery Master Switch off, and then back on to test it. The Cockpit Pressure Warning worked, so he turned that system on so that at a higher altitude he could activate the pressurisation. The cockpit heater was turned on and finally, he checked the lock for the jettison-able external fuel tanks which he did not want to throw away.

Mentally running through the rest of the checks, he then turned on the low-pressure fuel flow, tested the ignition, tested the throttle and lowered the canopy, locking it. Reaching for the throttle again, he opened it an inch before setting the maximum engine temperature control on, which would adjust the fuel flow to the engine if it began to overheat.

Running his eyes over the instruments, he made sure those displaying the control surfaces were neutral. With that done, he checked that the undercarriage was locked down, checked that the radar ranging was off, checked the presence of the emergency release handle for the canopy, made sure that all of the controls for the undercarriage were set correctly, checked the flaps were up and that they weren't set to 'emergency'.

With the hydraulic warning light on as it was expected, he turned off power to the elevators and ailerons, ran his eyes over the instruments again, making sure that the engine and flight instruments were set correctly and that the fire-warning light, audio warning and fuel pressure warning worked.

"Oxygen masks." he said to Nadya.

They each secured the masks over their faces, breathing in to check the condition of the air and checking that there were no leaks in the system. Double-checking that all the fuel tanks including the two drop-tanks were brimmed, Harry made sure that the booster for the fuel delivery was off having turned it on for a few seconds to make sure the warning light for it worked. He flicked the switch to choose which tanks to draw the fuel from to make sure that system both worked and that the indicators in the cockpit worked.

Setting the fuel tank selectors to draw from the drop-tanks, he made sure that the oxygen for their masks was being drawn from the main reservoir, turned on the Identification Friend or Foe which would make his location available to civilian air traffic control as well as military radar. Harry then turned on the navigation lights and the anti-G system, testing it by pressing a button that momentarily compressed the anti-G suit around his legs.

Making sure of the presence of the circuit breakers for the fuel tank pumps and the starter motors, he tested the generator failure warning lights, turned off a number of switches before moving the control stick and rudder pedals to their extremes.

With the parking brake on and enough pressure in the system for said brakes, he turned on the starter master switch and pressed the starter button.

"Oxygen!" ordered Harry.

They both breathed from their masks as the acrid, highly flammable and highly toxic AVPIN chemical spun the engine up to sixteen-hundred revolutions per minute, enough for the fuel to catch and the Rolls-Royce Avon to light. It then rapidly climbed another thousand RPM.

With the fire-warning light out, enough RPM, the jet-pipe maximum temperature set at five-hundred degrees Celsius, enough oil pressure, the generator working, the air brake tested and confirmed to be working as well as its indicators, Harry watched in the mirror as Nadya tested her controls, making sure that the control surfaces followed her actions.

He set the radio to the right frequency, checked the trim for the tailplane, checked the hydraulic pressure for the brakes a final time before turning on the power to the ailerons and elevators and did another test of the control surfaces including the flaps. He then performed the most important job, setting the compass correctly.

Turning on the fuel booster pump, he then actuated several hydraulic systems simultaneously to kill the pressure in the system, creating both an audio warning in his helmet headset and a light in the cockpit before the pressure built back up.

"Instruments?" Harry asked.

"Check and set." replied Nadya, confirming they were set right as he did yet another check of the control surfaces, setting the flaps and the trim on the rudder and ailerons before locking them. With the fuel systems set fine, he activated the push-to-talk on his radio.

"Zulu-Charlie-November, this is Hunter Golf-Sierra-Tango-Alpha-Golf, requesting taxi to runway two-six-zero. Over." Harry radioed the airfield controller.

" _ _Golf-Sierra-Tango-Alpha-Golf, we have no traffic, taxi and takeoff in your own time.__ " replied the controller.

"Roger."

Harry released the brakes and gently eased open the throttle, moving the Hunter out onto the runway. The hydraulic pressure was at around three-thousand pounds per square inch, their harnesses done up tightly, the canopy closed, locked and sealed. A few final checks and they'd racing down the immense strip of tarmac and launch themselves into the air.

Increasing engine RPM to four-thousand five-hundred, he checked the power controls for the control surfaces, rolling the aircraft forward a few yards with the engine RPM increasing another two-thousand five-hundred where he tested that the brakes still held the aircraft back.

With the windsock fluttering in their direction, showing that the wind was blowing directly towards them, Harry steadily opened the throttle, having released the brakes. As the air-speed indicator rose to one-hundred and twenty-five knots, he pulled back on the stick, the nose wheel coming off the ground.

At just over one-hundred and fifty knots, the entire aircraft lifted off the tarmac, unsticking effortlessly. Immediately, he braked the wheels and set the undercarriage to 'up' and slowly raised the flaps. There was a distinct thud as, approaching two-hundred and thirty knots, the nose-wheel locked in the up position.

"Nadya, take control and bring us up to twenty-thousand feet." Harry ordered; "Switch onto intercom and oxygen at ten-thousand, I'll pressurise the cockpit."

"I have control." she replied, taking the throttle and stick, easing back and keeping half an eye on the machmeter and altimeter.

At twenty thousand feet, with oxygen masks across their faces, they levelled out, Nadya gently manoeuvring the fighter to get a feel of it. Harry watched with an approving eye as she gradually got more confident.

"Go for a full roll, then reverse it." he encouraged.

Nadya, still slightly nervous, gently pushed the Hunter over onto its starboard wing-tip before going through the remaining two-hundred and seventy degrees to the normal plane of flight. More enthusiastically, she rolled it without hesitation in the opposite direction through a full three-hundred and sixty degrees.

"Hand me control." said Harry.

" _ _You have control.__ " Nadya stated over the intercom as he took the stick and throttle.

Harry pulled back on the stick, bringing the aircraft into a climb. As it went vertical, he fully rolled it once, pulled back so the were upside-down, rolled it fully a second time and pulled it into a dive, finishing the loop having fully rolled the fighter twice during said loop. He quickly turned to starboard, pulling four-Gs, or multiplying his body weight to four times its mass before half-rolling and reversing the turn so they were heading to port from their original direction. Finally, he turned back to the bearing they had been flying.

"Think you can do that?" he asked.

" _ _I think so.__ " she replied.

"Then go wild, this plane's structural limit is high enough you can safely pull seven, seven-and-a-half G." Harry stated, handing over control to Nadya.

She easily pulled the Hunter through his bag of tricks before beginning to experiment with what she could do with the jet. Sharp low-speed turns, high-speed barrel rolls, dives, climbs and loops. Nadya was just handing control over to Harry when two Royal Air Force 3 Squadron British Aerospace Harriers bounced them, the leader formating to their port side and the wingman behind them.

" _ _Unidentified aircraft, you will identify yourself or-__ " began one of the RAF pilots over the radio.

"Why don't you idiots just ask civilian air traffic control to identify us? We've been in continuous contact with them since we left the airbase at Celle." Harry growled irritably; "This is Hunter Golf-Sierra-Tango-Alpha-Golf on a sortie from Celle for however long it takes us to burn the fuel in the tanks, so sod off. Unless you want a quick lesson in air combat?"

He throttled back and applied the air brake suddenly, forcing the wingman to pull up and overshoot the decelerating Hunter. With his hand easing the throttle back open, Harry now was holding the Hunter right on the tail of the wingman. Suddenly the Harrier went into a split-S, rolling inverted and diving into a half-loop. He began to follow, having a feeling as to what was coming. As the black Hunter rolled over to follow, the leader went into a one-eighty degree turn and a shallow dive, and had Harry completed his own split-S, would have had the leader on his tail.

However, he'd barrel-rolled to a position above the leader and was now in a shallow dive after the two Harriers. The RAF pilots broke left and right, turning a hundred-and-eighty degrees in an attempt to reverse onto his tail, but Harry finally went into his own split-S and brought himself again onto the tails of the two Harriers, one at his two-o'clock, the other at his ten-o'clock.

They then decided to try outrunning him by opening up their throttles to full power. Despite the quite impressive power of their GR7 model Harriers, running twenty-two thousand pounds of thrust from their Rolls-Royce Pegasus engines, the squat aircraft couldn't outrun the Hunter, running as it was a Rolls-Royce Avon engine from an English Electric Lightning, minus the afterburner section. The sleeker, clean form of the black-painted fighter was keeping up with the air-to-air equipped Harriers from Laarbruch.

One of them suddenly employed his thrust-vectors to 'viff' – vector in forward flight – and caused the Hunter to overshoot. The wingman turned hard to port as his leader slowed his aircraft to a crawl. Harry knew exactly what to do, as at that moment one Harrier could out-turn him, sitting on a cloud of hot air while the second circled.

The Hunter's control stick was wedged in Harry's stomach and the throttle fully open. One Harrier was now sat on a cloud of hot air, unable to pitch up to follow him while the second had lost visual contact and within seconds had a Hunter bearing down on it from above and behind as it finished the one-eighty degree turn.

" _ _Damn you Alpha-Golf. How the hell are you doing this?!__ " demanded one of the Harrier pilots.

"I'm on leave from the Royal Air Force." Harry grinned behind his oxygen mask as the three British aircraft broke the combat and formated at ten-thousand feet.

" _ _What squadron?__ " asked the other Harrier pilot.

"According to the paperwork I've just had filed, _Jagdgeschwader_ 73 at Laage, I'm going to be on exchange with the MiG-29 unit there for the next year." Harry drawled, noting Nadya's eyes widening. He'd completely forgotten to mention that when they'd been chatting and having lunch.

" _ _Nobody outside the RAF could be that smug.__ " grumbled the same pilot; " _ _Break and return to base. Hunter boy, go and fix your transponder, it's not working.__ "

The two Harriers peeled away, but not before Harry got in a final snide remark.

"Don't get into any more fights with Hunters, you're outclassed there. If you need some good fare, I'm told that there's good pheasant and partridge shooting in southern Germany." he stated while leaning forward to check the transponder box. One of the wires had come loose and the thing wasn't transmitting any longer. "Returning to Celle."

* * *

"Enjoy yourself?" Harry asked as the Avon spooled down with a low whine.

"Never felt anything like it." Nadya replied with an infectious grin, peeling off her helmet, shaking a wave of blonde hair out; "I haven't had that much fun in an age. I love my little Taifun, but that's something else."

"You should try something with an afterburner then." said Harry with a smirk; "I've been lucky enough to fly quite a few things and the powerful 'burning jets are pretty damn fun. Just being able to shove the throttles open and blast away."

"They said that about the Starfighter." was the sarcastic riposte.

"Hey, the Starfighter isn't all that bad." Harry countered; "I've flown it and it's a pretty neat aeroplane... as long as you don't try doing something stupid, like flying it."

Nadya snorted as she disarmed and unstrapped from the ejector seat.

"To be honest, the Starfighter's nice to fly for short periods of time, at high altitude and in fairly straight lines." Harry admitted; "I have only flown Danish and Italian ones though. And I've stuck to high-altitude, good weather and been pretty damned careful."

"Good, because it would be embarrassing if you got hurt flying an idiotic aircraft idiotically." said Nadya.

"Don't worry, I've already experienced ejecting from a jet and I have no wish to do so again." replied Harry with a grimace.

"What!?" she demanded.

"Don't worry, it was a test ejection from a two-seat Gloster Meteor for which I volunteered out of boredom." Harry reassured her.

"I thought that it was men who weren't supposed to understand women." Nadya shook her head; "Not the other way around."

Harry laughed as he unstrapped from the ejector seat, making sure to replace the safety pin before dropping onto Celle Airbase's tarmac. Nadya did the same, making certain that her 'bang' seat wouldn't go bang before climbing out. Before they headed towards her hired Mercedes-Benz SL parked on the edge of the stand, Nadya gave the aircraft a pat on the side of the cockpit.

"A good aircraft." she commented.

"The single-seaters are good for interrupting boring after-dinner speakers." Harry smirked; "I once took one past an RAF base officers' mess at thirty feet and five-hundred knots. Apparently the unholy howl from the airflow over the cannon livened things up a bit. And shut up the person droning on and on."

"I don't know how your career is intact given you seem to have no care for authority and generally seem to do whatever you like whenever you like." Nadya commented, shaking her head.

"I generally do whatever I like whenever I like, but I know well enough when to cover up what I did." Harry said with a straight face; "Anyway, d'you need me to write anything in your logbook?"

"If you could." Nadya requested, retrieving said logbook from the seat of her hirecar.

Harry noted an hour-and-a-half sortie in a Hawker Hunter T.68 with just over fifty-five minutes as pilot in control including the takeoff and intensive air combat manoeuvring. He signed it as Flight Lieutenant H.J Potter, Royal Air Force. That would be interesting to anyone looking through it Nadya's logbook and the experience for herself would be useful. He had some suspicions that she had a fairly photographic memory because, before taking her up in the Hunter, he'd quickly run through the emergency procedures for the aircraft and got her to memorise the locations of the various instruments and controls. All of which had been done without hesitation or failure.

"D'you want to get some lunch now?" Nadya asked as Harry returned her logbook.

"Sure, my treat." Harry grinned.

"You've already taken me flying – I should pay." she objected.

"I don't often get the chance to take a friend out for lunch." Harry waved her objection off; "Especially good looking women."

"Be careful Harry, a woman might think you were talking about her." Nadya smirked, a slight blush appearing.

Harry chuckled as he climbed into the passenger seat of her hire car.

* * *

"So, MiG-29s at Rostock?" Nadya commented with a raised eyebrow, sipping from a glass of beer just after the waiter had taken away their plates, having had a quite satisfyingly tasty meal.

"I got told that I was being posted on exchange just yesterday evening." Harry admitted; "I've been told that my intelligence officer will be around, and that another RAF pilot will also be on the exchange. Apparently I'm the most experienced pilot of Warsaw Pact aircraft in the British Armed Forces with time on every MiG between the '15 and the '29."

"Oh, I wasn't aware that the '25 was in Western hands?" frowned Nadya.

"Mhmm, there are quite a few Eastern Bloc planes in NATO hands, including two ex-Iraqi MiG Foxbats, plus a load of airframe spares. I can't tell you who possesses them, that's classified." Harry responded.

RAF Boscombe Down with the Aircraft and Armament Evaluation Establishment had custody of the aircraft, all of which had been procured by Section Five. The testing was performed only at night-time and in such secrecy that only four pilots, two being Harry and Jock, two from A and AEE, knew about it. Ground crew were limited to a dozen technicians. The base controller and the test unit's CO were the only others 'in the know'.

"I heard that the Iraqis have retired their remaining MiG-29s because nobody is willing to maintain them." stated Nadya.

"Mhmm, the Russians have yet to secure such a stable position in the modern world that they would risk supporting a controversial nation like Iraq, especially in providing the ability to combat the no-fly zones we're enforcing over northern and southern Iraq." Harry nodded; "These exchanges with Western pilots getting their hands will be useful with ex-Soviet stuff being spread around like sherbet lemons."

"What's the betting some rich American tycoon gets hold of one of them and tries to kill himself with it." Nadya laughed.

"I don't do sucker bets unless I'm the one winning them." Harry rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair.

"Anyway, you've flown the '29, so is it up to the hype?" demanded Nadya.

"Somewhat. I haven't actually flown one in mock combat apart from one occasion when an RAF Tornado 'fired' an electric signal mimicking a Skyflash radar-guided missile. The crew didn't even know what they were 'shooting' at." Harry chuckled; "But the aircraft is designed for being guided into a fight by a controller. The onboard radar systems aren't great, what is great is that the Vympel R-73 heat seeking missile can be directed by a helmet display for shots at weird angles. The only place where the super-manoeuvrability thing comes into play is at speeds way below where a jet dogfight would occur."

"So it's an extremely powerful aerobatic aircraft with missiles?" Nadya concluded.

"Something like that." replied Harry; "Damn, now I've got to take one around an aerobatic course."

"That should either be very interesting or very lethal." said Nadya, before cocking her head to one side; "Does having all this classified stuff, all these secrets, knocking around your head get annoying, having exceptional experiences and not being allowed to discuss them in any detail with friends and family?"

"I don't honestly know." Harry mused; "I was never the most sociable type, my one true friend in school stayed to complete her education when I dropped out and joined the armed forces, we didn't keep in contact because I was so rarely in the country during the first few years. Otherwise, the nearest thing to family for me is the group of guys who I work with, the kind who I'd trust my life to as my only blood relatives would be rather happy if I upped and died."

"Oh?"

"Orphan, see. Parents killed in a terrorist attack back in the mid-seventies." said Harry with a thin, humourless smile; "Can't say I've ever had a family, I've always been a bit of a loner."

"I'm sorry-" began Nadya.

"Don't worry. I've tried never to let it define who I am. I make my own choices, right or wrong and accept the consequences, all that changed was that I had to start doing that far earlier." Harry cut her off.

Nadya fell silent for a moment, piecing together what he'd said and what she could accurately infer from that. Orphaned as he was learning to walk-and-talk. Possibly brought up by neglectful relatives. Forced to become self-reliant at an early age. Oh the irony. She made a snap decision to open up her rather personal story.

"I can sympathise with you." she admitted; "I don't know what became of my parents. All I know was that I was smuggled across the Berlin Wall as a year-old baby in nineteen-eighty and sent to blood relatives. For a few years I lived in their... custody. They weren't pleasant people, but eventually George Roberts, one of my neighbours, found out and took exception to their behaviour, and since then I've lived with 'Uncle George'."

"Sometimes I wonder what I could have been with a loving family." Harry sighed; "Probably not sat here talking to you, but I live for the present and the future, not what could have been."

Once again they fell silent. Harry was occasionally struck by melancholy, often in the long hours sat in the field waiting for something to happen, for a fight to erupt, but he had spoken truthfully, he didn't live for what might have been. Nadya contemplated what he had said, something far deeper than she expected. To live not in or for the past but for the present and the future. Subconsciously, she had indeed done so. Skipping years at school, graduating early, saving money, making contacts, studying. Her yearning to fly had led her to live for the future.

"Don't get me wrong, I do have regrets, but I cannot change the past. I can however learn from it, make better choices." Harry said eventually; "And yes, sometimes living a life full of secrets can be tiring but it's something you learn to cope with it. I suppose that's one area where no family is good, nobody asking awkward questions that I can't answer. There have been times I wished that there was someone who would care for me, but I learnt otherwise too early."

Nadya swiftly locked down her emotional responses, knowing from her own experiences that outbursts of emotion would simply confuse and make things awkward. She settled for simply taking his hand and gently squeezing for a moment.

"I don't understand sometimes how people so happily denigrate their parents, if they no longer had them..." continued Harry; "Ah damn, I should take my own advice and not live in the past. You know Nadya, I don't know why I'm so open about this. I've only discussed this with one person, ever, before you."

"Maybe we're just similar people." Nadya shrugged; "Both of us are orphans, both of us love flying and mucking about with old aeroplanes, both of us had crap childhoods until we took control and made our own choices. For you the armed forces, for me the guardianship of someone who cares for me."

"Maybe." Harry nodded; "Sorry, I shouldn't be unloading my woes on you-"

"Don't." Nadya snapped; "Just don't. Sometimes even the strongest people need to talk through things. God knows I have had to often enough. Besides, I'd be a pretty terrible friend to refuse to listen. And don't apologise for attempting to apologise because if you do I'll hit you."

"Okay okay." Harry laughed, a smile breaking out on his face; "I get it. But anyway, thanks."

He directed a significant glance at one of the waitresses as he drained the last dregs of his coke, knowing he was flying on that evening he hadn't ordered alcohol. She quickly got the hint and brought the bill. Harry quickly glanced over it and produced a wallet. He searched through it, going past wodges of British pounds, US dollars and other European currency before digging out a couple of Deutsche Mark notes.

"Danke, die anderung ist ein tipp." Harry stated, handing them over.

"I assume you're not staying tonight, given you've not touched the alcohol?" asked Nadya as Harry squared the bill.

"I could just be a tea-totaller." said Harry with a slight smirk.

"But I saw that hip-flask in the pocket of your flying suit." Nadya countered.

"Maybe I was pleased to see you." Harry said innocently.

"Stop, I'm innocent." she laughed, holding both hands up.

"But anyway I'm flying onto _Jagdgeschwader Dreiundsiebzig_ 'Steinhoff' at Rostock-Laage tonight." Harry said before adding to the waitress who was deftly removing the various items of used crockery, glassware and cutlery; "Danke sehen."

"Bitteschön." replied the waitress.

"If you don't mind me asking, how do you manage, as just a gymnasium graduate, to run something like a Taifun?" Harry asked as they headed back out onto the streets of Celle.

"My guardian is the gamekeeper for a big game reserve in southern Germany. There are a lot of rich German industrialists and American generals willing to pay a lot to shoot a wild boar or a deer and have its head stuffed and mounted." Nadya replied; "I often go along as spotter or gun-caddy."

"That's pretty neat. I don't usually shoot for sport, somehow it seems a bit pointless." said Harry.

"I'm curious as to how, aged, you said eighteen at Fairford, you were running a Spitfire and a Super Sabre." commented Nadya.

"The Spit was inherited. The Super Sabre was pre-teenaged rebellion when I took up arms dealing as a hobby." Harry replied with a completely straight face.

"I should never have asked." Nadya shook her head in despair.

"Well you did."

"Much to my regret."


	12. Chapter 12

**Early December 1996, Rostock, the former German 'Democratic' Republic**

Harry finished his close examination of the house he was considering buying. The estate agent was patiently sat in the kitchen waiting for the possible customer who had paid a hundred US dollars to him and a similar sum to the current owners for an immediate viewing of the building. Cash dollars were always nice to solve problems.

The house itself was an elegantly 'Germanic' building in the Altstadt – the Old Town – and had a certain Gingerbread House appeal to it. The outside, built of red brick and clad with pale adornments didn't stand out too much for Harry's sensibilities, it had a ramp down to the cellar for cars, it was within sight of the Marienkirche and the city square. After checking what he could of the building for security and structural integrity without bringing in a host of engineers, architects and security consultants, he decided to bite the bullet and go for it.

Of course there was quite a lot more to do than just buy the damned place.

* * *

Apart from the Commanding Officer of JG73 who had been informed ahead of time and several ground crew waiting to one side with a hydraulic bomb trolley, a number of people were quite surprised with an A-26 Invader heavy attack fighter taxied up to the military side of Rostock-Laage, big four-blade propellers nearly touching the ground.

The strange things were firstly, that it was in RAF nightfighter colours despite the fact that British had only ever had a handful of A-26s. The second was that the engines were bulkier than normal and had different propellers. The third strange thing was that it was armed to the teeth. Under each wing were two gun pods, each with two Browning AN/M3 fast-firing air-cooled heavy-machine guns, a further three in each wing, eight in the nose and a further four in a pair pod bolted on each side of the aircraft's fuselage. Total, twenty-six guns, each of them the fast-firing post-war replacement for the AN/M2, twelve-hundred rounds-per-minute each or a total of five-hundred and twenty bullets a second.

The bomb trolley was rushed in as, with one engine running to power the hydraulic pump, the bomb bay doors opened. The ground crew positioned it carefully and raised the platform to below a large gun safe which the clamps released on a signal to the pilot. With it quickly shifted to a van that had been moved onto the stand, they returned and a large, iron-bound wooden chest was removed from the bomb bay and taken to the van.

The second engine wound to a stop as the bomb bay released a ladder down onto the tarmac and the pilot climbed down the ladder through the bomb bay, dropping from there onto the tarmac with a backpack slung over his shoulder, leaving his flying helmet and parachute pack in the cockpit.

Quickly switching to the van after a handshake and a few hushed words with the unit CO, the pilot drove off.

* * *

Harry sank into his leather armchair with a satisfied sigh. He'd flown out a chest full of his gear, a load of shrunken furniture and a gun cabinet to Rostock-Laage and trucked it to his newly-acquired house. Now the place was set up how he liked it, lots of dark, varnished wood, warm colours and a hint of Britishness. Deciding to treat himself to a cigar, he quickly drew a Fairbairn-Sykes knife from his left-forearm sheath and sliced the end off the cigar before lighting it with a Swan Vesta match which he struck against the rough bands on the grip of the knife.

Leaning back and savouring the musky, slightly fruity taste of the cigar, he started hitting the piles of paperwork that had built up in the time he was busy overseas. A large quantity of the paperwork concerned an arms shipment to Oman of recently-retired British Army Scorpion light tracked vehicles, a number of M46 heavy artillery pieces that Section Five had 'acquired' from Iraq, Somalia and Yugoslavia, RPG-7V unguided rocket launchers, Strela anti-air heat-seeking shoulder-launched missiles, retired SAS Blowpipe anti-air missiles and Browning Hi-Power pistols.

The multi-million pound deal would recoup all his costs in acquiring the 'merchandise' and the profit would be split half-and-half between himself and a joint account for Section Five. He already had further negotiations with Sultan Qaboos Said al Said for a significant shipment of L1A1 rifles which he'd 'liberated' from Canada and Australia after both banned semi-automatic rifles, essentially allowing him a free source of the weapons. Harry was intending to add to the table his accrued collection of bits for aeroplanes which the Omani Air Force used including SEPECAT Jaguar, BAE Hawk, Shorts Skyvan and Bell Iroquis helicopters.

Oman was a fertile ground for arms dealing without moral objections. He'd bought Hawker Hunters from the Omani Air Force and sold most of them into civilian hands, appropriately demilitarised. The Americans had just bought a shipment of 'Red' aircraft through him, including MiG-21s, '23s and, with an appropriate fee, he'd started the ball rolling on the acquisition of MiG-29s from Moldova, negotiations for which were still ongoing.

Yawning, he started going through it, double checking all the writing to make sure there were no written traps before signing off on anything. There were a few bits of paperwork from the estate contractors on the subject of maintaining the basement full of aircraft that he was hanging onto as an investment. All in all, very boring.

A few hours later, Harry had smoked another cigar and eaten his way through two large bags of crisps. He wasn't sure quite how he managed to stay fit given the amount he ate, but he managed it. He had managed to work through the paperwork he'd been given, meaning that he wouldn't bother doing any for another decade. Checking his watch, he contemplated what to do. It was nearing midday, he was expecting a delivery of a few further bits by air in about twenty hours time, so he had nothing to do.

Grabbing his flying suit, he was walking downstairs when he froze, hearing the unmistakeable sound of a lock being picked. The khaki cowl of his hooded shirt came up and he smoothly drew the MEUSOC Kimber M45 1911 from his waistband, slipping the safety catch off and pulling back the hammer. Moving through the house to the kitchen where the back door was, he watched as the lock was picked, evidently by someone with a lot of skill.

The door swung open to admit a figure wearing cargo trousers, black leather combat boots and a sports jacket. The moment Harry slipped around the door from the dining room to the kitchen, there was a pistol facing him.

"Hahaha... I thought you might be here." Jock proclaimed, lowering his pistol.

"I could have shot you through the door." Harry commented, holstering his own.

"Mhmm, I knew you wouldn't." said Jock, chucking himself into a chair; "I've been here a few days, I left the same day as you but didn't get caught up in all that mess with the pub fight."

"You heard about that?" asked Harry, moving to the fridge and raking around for a bottle of Coca-Cola.

"I did indeed. But on a more interesting subject, I've spent the last few days doing some investigations in the area that might interest you." Jock smirked, accepting a glass of coke; "Like really interest you."

"Such as?" Harry replied.

"I got wind of a major arms dealer, an illegal one, in the city. I grabbed some weapons from our stockpile and did a bit of trading with him, he now accepts me as a business partner. I buy the odd cache of ex-East German guns, I get him ammunition for some of his... rarer... bits of equipment." Jock explained; "This guy is an utter bastard who I wouldn't hesitate to shoot, but I want to dig up his caches of arms, because if we can lift them... well, it would be a boost to our stockpile."

"Indeed." Harry said blandly; "What kind of base for his operations does he have? Does he live there? Where is it? Are his arms stockpiles there? What quantity of goons does he have?"

"His base is an old mine, the surface compound around it isn't particularly sizeable but there are arms caches everywhere in the mine itself. The compound is guarded somewhat, but it's believed to be owned by a company that has gone bankrupt, so the guards are 'security' in the employ of the creditors." said Jock; "The mine and the caves are patrolled, but it shouldn't be too much trouble if we do them over soon before the other three are sent to America. I've counted no more than thirty guards at one time, but the boss man doesn't live there, he is an upstanding member of the community and has a town house."

"He has to die." Harry stated, receiving a nod from Jock; "Make his death something unrelated. A mugging gone wrong. With suitable planning we can make the raid look like a mine-collapse. Maybe some noxious mine gas going up. Can we get hold of gas cylinders containing the right stuff?"

"I'll look into it." Jock agreed; "One complication. I'm not entirely certain that the stuff we're going to lift would react well to magic. I know you can usually use the right stuff to not affect electrical items, but some of the explosives and other ordnance I fear would react adversely to your mojo."

"So we can't shrink it and no magicking ourselves out. Looks like the old-fashioned manual method." Harry sighed; "I've still got a week and a few day's rent on the van I used to move myself into this place. What kind of quantity of arms are we looking at?"

"AK-type weapons in their thousands, SVD marksman's rifles in hundreds, maybe a thousand. RPG-7V rocket launchers with PG7VR dual-warhead anti-tank rounds in hundreds." Jock said, consulting a pad of notes he'd pulled from a trouser pocket after putting down his drink; "DSHKM and KPV heavy-machine guns, two ZSU anti-aircraft twin-barrel installations and Strela heat-seeking missiles, with their launchers. Bullets in enough quantities that this guy could start another world war and win by simply not running out of bullets."

"So we need to get this all to an aircraft of sufficient size and get it out of Germany." Harry stated, leaning back and grinning. He loved a challenge.

"One other thing... this guy has aerial ordnance. Guided missiles and unguided rockets, and I've already got two possible purchasers looking for the latter to equip Mil-8 and '24 helicopters. The A mercenary group called Executive Outcomes operating in Sierra Leone for their Hinds and Hips." Jock grinned; "The Sierra Leonean government are under pressure not to empty International Monetary fund buying weapons on behalf of these mercenaries so they want to pay in rough diamonds, in a quite prodigious quantity."

"Right, you get plotting, I'll need to head back to Britain, get the transport and the other three." Harry ordered, grabbing his flying suit from where he'd dropped it.

"Aye aye." replied Jock with a mocking salute; "I've got a basic plan of the mine compound and the caves below in my head, I'll draw it out, that should help. Make sure to raid your grandfather's hanger for something suitably large."

"I've got a delivery at the airport at midday tomorrow, the receipt for the cargo is in the second drawer on the right-hand side of my desk, if I'm not around by then, you deal with it." Harry yelled, already at the front door.

"Wilco."

* * *

 **Early December 1996, the Cambrian Mountains, Wales**

Deep in the Cambrian Mountains of Wales, a long valley echoed briefly to the roar of two radial piston engines as a dark-painted aircraft alighted on a runway built on a rocky shelf on the side of the tallest, steepest of the hills. One of Britain's last true wildernesses, the valley was home to Caereryr, one of the most imposing medieval fortresses remaining and the ancient seat of the Potter family.

It was not hard for wizards to make their way in the non-magical world and the Potter family had been merciless in their expansion of power for a millennia, from the Romans leaving Britain until the day they quietly vanished into secrecy in the seventeenth century. So the hidden and impregnable Caereryr had evolved over the years. The centre of the fortress on the peak of the hill was a single, massive building with four rounded towers at each corner and a square-built fortified entrance which stood out of the front. Surrounding it were two increasingly large curtain walls and a winding road down to the airfield. Buried deep in the hillside were the underground parts of the complex.

The A-26 Invader taxied up to the twin doors that concealed the hangar, painted to blend into the landscape. In the cockpit, Harry pressed a button on a radio transmitter and they rolled open slowly, allowing the aircraft to taxi straight in. Turning around by one of the walls of the immense cave, Harry parked the aircraft facing back towards the doors. As he shut it down, he opened the bomb bay doors to allow the ladder to descend and remotely turned on the lights in the ceiling of the cave hangar.

Four people climbed down the ladder from the aircraft, dropping onto the floor of the immense hangar.

"I trust you've got good reason for bringing us here?" asked Nick, raising an eyebrow as he glanced around. Someone really needed to take a pin to Harry's hoarding and arms dealing habits that apparently he'd had since boyhood.

Dominican Republic P-51 Mustangs, over thirty of them, Turkish Super Sabres, even more of them than the Mustangs. A similar number of B-25 Mitchells from the Indonesian Air Force, F-104 Starfighters by the dozen. Saab Draken interceptors, Avro Shackleton maritime patrol bombers, South African English Electric Canberras, Portugese T-33 Shooting Stars and A-7 Corsairs, even CA-27 Sabres and de Havilland Vampires and Venoms. The kid really needed another hobby or a girlfriend.

"I do indeed." Harry replied with a mysterious smile, walking towards the back of the hanger and his most prized aircraft.

Charlus Potter had flown in the RAF during early adulthood, mainly as an unglamorous ground-attack pilot doing air interdiction operations deep into the heart of Occupied Europe and had truly caught the flying 'bug'. After the war, he'd kept a series of big, long-range aircraft to transport him from continent to continent and it was one of these which Harry was approaching, a Lockheed Super Constellation. An elegant aircraft with a slightly arched fuselage and four large radial engines.

Apart from a small bedroom, a galley and a bunk-room at the front, the aircraft was outfitted for cargo.

"Come on you three, get in." Harry ordered, directing them to the steps to the Constellation; "I'll tell you when we're in the air, and no sooner. This is pretty unofficial and I don't want it compromised."

"Most stuff we do is pretty unofficial." smirked Bill as he and Jack followed Harry.

"You're not going to get us killed doing something stupid?" asked Nick, folding his arms obstinately.

"Probably." Harry replied with a grin.

"Can't let you get killed with these bastards and leave me out of the fun." Nick said eventually, climbing up to the aircraft.

"Right, we need to get this aircraft going." Harry sighed; "Jack, go and get the fuel bowsers with hundred octane avgas, about five-thousand five-hundred Imperial Gallons. Bill, Nick, you're lucky I already changed the oil and ran the engines a couple of weeks ago otherwise I'd have you crawling on the wings with cans of oil."

He walked through to the cockpit and settled in the left-hand seat, the captain's chair. The Constellation's cockpit was far less cramped than some he'd flown in, such as the Boeing 747 and rather simpler in terms of the number of gauges, switches, levers and knobs.

Undercarriage down and check, parking brakes on and locked, check. He turned on the hydraulic pumps, checked their pressure was sufficient. Harry then checked that the landing light system and ignition were both off before turning on the radio and the navigation lights. There was sufficient pressure in the emergency oxygen system, the wing de-icers were off while the seals on that system were indicated to be in good condition. After several checks on the pitot tubes which measure air speed, Harry reset the clocks and altimeters and continued checking the systems, until eventually, he was just waiting for Jack to finish fuelling the aircraft.

Fortunately, Harry had long-since replaced the old Bedford QL 'Queen Lizzie' four-hundred and fifty gallon tankers of WWII vintage with a pair of more modern tankers which quickly fuelled up the Constellation. With the locking pins removed from the undercarriage, the external walk-around done, the fuel tanks full and the SAS men inside, Harry fired up the four powerful radials one-by-one, clouds of smoke drifting out of the huge hanger doors.

Releasing the brakes, he eased the throttles forward on the two inboard engines, easing the aircraft out of the hangar. Jack settled at the flight engineer's station and hit the button on the radio transmitter for closing the hangar doors. Harry was watching the oil temperatures, pressures, fuel flow, engine RPM and magnetos to make sure that the engines were turning over fine. At the end of the runway, he turned into wind and hit the radio.

"Private airfield Charlie-Alpha-Echo-Romeo, Shawbury control, requesting activation of flight-plan filed at sixteen-hundred hours for launch of Constellation Golf-Papa-Oscar-Tango-Tango and climb to flight level one-zero-zero for Rostock-Laage." he radioed to the area control at RAF Shawbury.

" _Hello Charlie-Alpha-Echo-Romeo, this is Shawbury, please get Golf-Papa-Oscar-Tango-Tango onto the channel._ " requested the controller.

"Golf-Papa-Oscar-Tango-Tango here." Harry stated, affecting an Oxford drawl.

"G _olf-Papa-Oscar-Tango-Tango, you will pass through the control zones of East Midlands Airport, RAF Waddington and RAF Coningsby._ " stated the controller.

"I am aware." replied Harry.

" _You have no traffic in my zone, you are clear to takeoff and climb._ " the controller said.

"Roger." Harry responded, easing open all four throttles slowly until the engines were roaring away at full power.

The Constellation trundled forward, gathering speed. At sixty miles-per-hour, Harry half-closed the cooling shutters on the engines and gently eased back on the yoke. The nose rose slowly off the tarmac and the aircraft just levitated, pulled into the air by its four engines. Harry raised the undercarriage and entered a west-bound corkscrew, gaining altitude before turning for Germany.


	13. Chapter 13

**Early December 1996, Rostock, Germany**

"What we have here are, essentially, two separate operations." Harry stated, sat in his study with the other four SAS Section Five operators stood around the room; "Gustav Neuthall is the arms dealing kingpin in this part of the world, and a supposedly upstanding member of the community. We need to lift his arms caches and dispose of him. Elimination of his supporters is a secondary."

"I've got here the location of Neuthall's home and a basic map of the arms caches which are held in a semi-abandoned mine." said Jock; "What we need is to get Herr Neuthall dead so he can't react to anything occurring to his stockpile. However we will need to act quickly to hit the mine before they realise anything has happened to their boss man."

"I thought a mugging gone wrong would be good." Harry added.

"Even better, get one of his mooks to do it with your mojo." Nick suggested.

"Indeed." Jock nodded.

"I've flown out some large quantities of sulphur, which when burnt will emit some pretty nasty gases as a first stage in covering up the raid. From there I've got bottled methane for an explosion." Harry continued.

"Right, we need to get this done as quickly as possible. All of us hit the mine, have you got any more Polyjuice?"

"Enough for a couple of hours, why?" said Harry.

"Because you're going to hire another five vans to transport the nasty chemicals and arms. I've got some samples from another mook for that, so we go in, kill all the guards, load up the weapons in the vans, it might take two or three shipments. The mine goes boom, and the boss is found dead, killed by his own mook." Jock explained; "Sound good?"

"We need somewhere away from here to congregate with the vans, just to make sure there is no suspicion on Harry." Jack pointed out; "With the aircraft at the old airfield at Pütnitz, we will also have to transport the arms a fair few miles."

"Luckily, Pütnitz is fairly close to the old mine." Harry stated; "That, along with its state of abandonment is why I chose the place. We can use that as the base point. I'll drive each of the vans over there, though I'll need someone to drive me back to near the hire dealership."

"Right, let's get going, the sooner we deal with this bastard, the sooner his weapons are taken into more responsible hands." Jock said, standing up from where he was sitting on the edge of Harry's desk.

* * *

" _Jock, start moving, I'm about five minutes out with the gas bottles. I got our target's chief mook, his bodyguard with a control curse, the target will be dead in six hours._ " Harry's voice came over the radio in a whisper; " _I'm going to bait out the guards by driving up to the gate. When I get the ball rolling, take out anyone else patrolling._ "

"Move move move." Jock growled.

The three SAS men accompanying him vanished into the woodland surrounding the mine compound. A large van, not quite a lorry but a pantechnicon with a enlarged bed and box rattled up to the gates of the compound. Immediately it was bracketed by a pair of searchlights. Jock watched through the scope of his Arctic Warfare Suppressed rifle as two guards walked over to the cab of the truck. An face he recognised as one of the minor managers of the stockpile leaned out of the window.

Bloody wizards. The guards gestured him out and round to the back of the truck which the disguised Harry opened. They leaned forward to look into it and all hell broke loose. Harry swung around and produced a Welrod pistol. As one of the guards was peering into the van, his comrade was shot through the head by the silenced pistol. Then as he swung around, reaching for his own gun, there was a flash of steel as a ginunting short sword sliced his throat open.

There had been fourteen guards and a supervisor. Now that was reduced to twelve guards and a supervisor. Jock tensed slightly, pulling the trigger. A guard stood next to a searchlight in one of the towers flanking the gate simply sank out of sight as a seven-point-six-two subsonic bullet through a specially-made barrel took him down. Cycling the bolt, Jock watched as Harry calmly turning the Welrod on the other guard tower and took down the guard.

He took a look at each of the corner towers. The rear two were seemingly unoccupied or their occupants dead while the two corners closest to him were still occupied. Jock sent a further two bullets into his targets, scoring fatal hits with expert efficiency as he mentally calculated that of the fourteen guards, only eight were left.

The truck was moving again, driving through the compound up to the corrugated-iron warehouse which housed the offices and the entrance to the mine. Jock kept an eye on Harry as he approached the building. Two further guards approached him, unaware of what was going on until the twin ginunting short swords appeared from their sheaths under Harry's long coat. Both were dead within seconds.

There was a soft crack as the Arctic Warfare Suppressed fired again, followed by a mechanical sound as the bolt was cycled quickly and a second shot fired. The targets were two guards walking around the corner. There should be no more than five men left alive on the surface. For a few tense minutes there was no sound from the building, then there were a couple of light cracks, indicative of a suppressed weapon with supersonic ammunition.

A few moments later a light flashed at one of the windows. One, two, pause, one, two.

"Move in. Base is clear." Jock radioed the others.

They slipped into the compound to find Harry holding a suppressed pistol on a metal staircase with two of the subterranean guards lying dead at the bottom. The rest of the surface guard were strewn through the building, equally dead.

"Go kill." Harry ordered.

* * *

"Bloody hell." commented Jack as he brought the last body into the mine.

Piled from wall to wall with a small corridor were immense amounts of armaments and ordnance. SKS carbines were stacked next to AK-74s and AKMs, while LMG variants were also scattered through the collection. Then there were general-purpose machine-guns, rocket launchers and other weapons.

"Right, let's start getting this lot out." Harry said, gesturing at a pallet; "I think I can safely levitate the pallets, I won't risk directly touching the ordnance, I don't want to risk touching the lot off. Bill, Jack, I'll need you to unload the pallets into the trucks and send them back down. When your trucks are full, dump the stuff under tarpaulins next to the aircraft."

He'd returned to his normal form and thrown off the long jacket to reveal a short-barrelled SR-25 and body-armour, a distinct change from the slightly ill-fitting suit he'd been dressed up in to imitate the manager. The SAS men ignored the pile of bodies as they began shifting the weapons out of the mine.

It took just twenty minutes to load up one of the trucks fully, so in two hours, the first shipment was emptied onto the tarmac by the Constellation. They returned and kept working, bringing up more and more weapons, even equipment, immaculately preserved, of WWII vintage from all sides. Finally at dawn, the last shipment left, with the vans fully laden with ammunition for the third time each. From commencing work at zero-two hundred hours to dawn at zero-seven thirty, they'd loaded fifteen truck-loads.

Harry set up the final 'event'. A small amount of explosive, no bigger than a dab of blu-tac to hold a piece of paper to a whiteboard, and a detonator were attached to the a bottle of methane, with half-a-dozen more around it. He donned a gas mask and emptied bag after bag of sulphur in a separate part of the mineshaft, along with a trail of petrol. Rather crude but he was confident that in the mix of gases it would be missed. Setting the detonator and lighting the petrol, he escaped quite rapidly to a fast Mercedes sat outside, buggering off pretty swiftly.

He was several miles away when the mine went up with an earth-shaking rumble. Without glancing back, Harry floored it and raced towards the old airfield where the Constellation was waiting. It took a couple of hours work, ignoring the plume of smoke from about ten miles away to tag each of the firearms and put them into a container which Harry shrank. It was the ordnance which took up most of the aircraft. Bullets, aerial rockets, guided air-to-air, air-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles all had to be handled carefully in the loading.

By the time that the tarmac was clear of cargo, the aircraft was at maximum weight and there wasn't a spare inch of room. Jock was flying co-pilot, Jack as flight engineer, Harry as ever was captain while Nick was sat on the jump-seat. Bill was up the rear as he'd have to unload a certain amount of cargo for the flight-deck to become accessible.

This time, taking every inch of the one-point-six mile runway to lumber into the air, the Constellation rumbled west for Kent and Ravenscroft Manor.

* * *

 **Friday 6** **th** **December 1996, Ravenscroft Manor, Kent**

Harry was working in the armoury hall of the manor, working through the ammunition, choosing what to throw and what to keep, when Jock poked his head around the door.

"Harry, I've got an immediate request for one thousand L1A1 rifles and three-thousand AK-74s for the Sierra Leone Government, and their mercenaries want thirty-two round S5 rocket pods times twenty and all the rockets we can muster which adds up to over four thousand rounds." Jock called; "They also want to acquire SNEB rocket pods times twenty and another four-thousand rounds. The value of these against the value of the diamonds they are offering makes it worth it."

"Right, where are the other three?!" Harry demanded, springing up.

"Shit... America." groaned Jock, realising that Bill, Jack and Nick had all been sent on a transport to Fort Bragg; "Please tell me that you have a spare pilot tucked away somewhere, someone you can trust..?"

"There is... one person." Harry mused.

"I don't care if it's someone's garden gnome, as long as this person can fly." Jock said, storming off.

Harry locked the doors on the armoury and headed up to his study, very much the same as all of his other offices. Dark varnished woods, piles of books, leather armchairs, and a half-dismantled Rolls-Royce Griffon in bits strewn on old newspapers laid on every spare surface. Climbing over the lower part of the engine block to get at his chair, Harry sat down and grabbed the phone, dialling in a number he had scrawled on a bit of paper.

" _Jah?_ " was the greeting from the other end of the line the moment it was picked up.

"Guten morgen Nadya." Harry said to her.

" _Good morning Harry._ " she responded; " _How are you?_ "

"Not bad, not bad." he said before deciding to cut to the point; "I was hoping I could beg a favour of you."

" _Is this like a knight wearing a lady's scarf at a joust?_ " Nadya asked, with a distinct smirk audible in her voice.

"Hardy-har." Harry rolled his eyes; "No, I need someone to fly co-pilot with me and one of my colleagues who can do flight engineer."

" _Something big?_ " said Nadya.

"It's fairly simple though, it's basically the same as most planes built from nineteen-thirty to nineteen-seventy." replied Harry; "It is complicated by the need for three crew but otherwise the flying controls are pretty similar to anything of Second World War vintage."

" _Where do you need me?_ " she asked instantly; " _I can get in the air with my Taifun in ten minutes._ "

"I'm at a private airfield near Maidstone, actually, it would probably be best to go into Headcorn Aerodrome because we don't have any of the usual airfield systems on the ground here." Harry stated.

" _That should take... give me a moment... about three and a half hours._ " Nadya said after a sound of map paper being moved.

"You can do it?" Harry checked.

" _Jah, but you owe me a big favour._ " she answered; " _I trust this isn't strictly official?_ "

"No, it isn't and you'll need to take a couple of injections." Harry added.

"A really big favour." was the reply.

Harry paused for a moment. He was delivering about a million US dollars worth of L1A1 SLRs, one-point-five million dollars of AK-74s, magazines worth two-hundred thousand, twenty Matra Type 115 rocket pods worth three-hundred thousand, SNEB rockets for those Matra pods worth three million US dollars, S-5 rocket pods worth another two-hundred thousand and four-thousand S-5 rockets worth two-million dollars.

Assuming the quality was right, the Sierra Leoneans were offering five-hundred approximately fifty-carat rough diamonds, which when compared to cut diamonds weren't worth a huge amount, only four-hundred US dollars per carat, or twenty-thousand each totalling ten million US dollars worth of diamonds. And with all the arms he had being 'borrowed', appropriated or simply stolen, he was making ten-million US dollars. And fuelling the Constellation to the brim only cost twenty-thousand pounds. He could afford to pay her well for the job.

"Indeed. I'll also see you're paid for the job." Harry stated; "I'll pick you up at Headcorn. Don't worry about customs, they'll be sorted out for you."

" _See you soon then._ "

* * *

Cutting the connection with Britain, Nadya wondered quietly what she was getting into. She had the weekend off, and 'Pa' as he was now, formerly Uncle George, was used to her taking her little Messerschmitt tourer to explore Europe over the weekends, so her vanishing for a few days wouldn't be unusual. What she was curious was to where Harry was flying, and in what. Injections suggested somewhere with some interesting diseases. Hopefully it would be interesting, she'd always been and adventurous spirit.

Grabbing a bag of clothes she carried in the back of her car for emergencies, Nadya also reached under the spare wheel for something rather more sensitive. One .455 Webley M1911 pistol, given to her on her sixteenth birthday and the day that George had legally adopted her. It was probably worth bringing.

She slid it into a holster under her jacket, closed and locked the car before heading over to the Taifun.

* * *

Jock released the crane and raised it up, backing away from the cargo loader having loaded the pallets of rifles onto it and then craned the rocket pods onto the top. The FV434 maintenance tractor wasn't meant for the job but its crane could carry three tons and made his job a lot easier. Climbing out of the vehicle, he climbed up a ladder hanging from the Constellation's door. Moving down to the cargo door, he began the process of shifting the pallets of rifles, magazines and the rocket pods into the cargo hold of the aircraft.

He soon finished loading the rockets themselves, eight thousand of them, into crates. The SNEB rockets went into crates just over metre tall, a metre wide and a metre long, each holding two-hundred and twenty-five rounds, and eighteen crates total. The S-5 rockets went in crates a metre and a half long, a metre wide and a metre tall, holding three-hundred and twenty rounds occupying a further twelve crates. The aircraft effortlessly swallowed the cargo, nonetheless, by the time everything was on board, the aircraft was full. It had a cargo hold that stretched fifty feet from the depths of the tail section to the small accommodation behind the cockpit, but all the same, crates were strapped down from floor to roof.

Jock had put the rocket pods themselves into anonymous looking crates when Harry's Lister-Jaguar Mk.3 roared up. Climbing down the ladder onto the tarmac when Harry and a good-looking blonde of no more than twenty climbed out of the car.

"A Constellation." she stated, looking up at the aircraft.

"Mhmm, more specifically, it's mine." Harry responded

"One of these days I'm going to start a running count of how many aeroplanes you have." she commented.

"Don't bother lass, I gave up years ago." Jock said, appearing from behind the cargo lift, smirking to himself as she leapt around, having not spotted him; "I've got the cargo loaded up, all we need is to clear the stand, get the aircraft going and get in the air. If you've filed a flight-plan that is?"

"Yeah, I've done it." Harry replied; "I need to grab some kit, if you can sort out things with Nadya."

"So, Sierra Leone." Nadya stated as Harry slipped into the cockpit a few minutes later, her arm still stinging from a couple of injections she'd had to take.

"Yup." Harry nodded.

"You do realise there's a civil war going on there?" she asked; "Wait... of course you do. Sometimes I worry about you Harry."

"And I never bother wasting time trying to worry about him." Jock interrupted; "It's better to concentrate on things you have a hope of achieving."

"You're one to talk. I seem to remember something I had to bail you out of involving an American admiral's wife and most of their Navy cops chasing us from Norfolk Navy Yard to Andrews and the transport I had there." Harry scowled at him, sliding into the captain's seat and beginning the start up.

One-by-one, the four engines, a total of fourteen-thousand horsepower, roared into motion, spewing grey smoke across most of Kent from the exhausts as each of the gleaming propellers turned over and the engines behind them burst into life. The exhausts soon began spitting flames as Harry eased open two of the throttles to swing the aircraft around onto the long driveway which served as a runway, testing the brakes against all four engines running up before releasing them.

The long, elegant-looking airliner, gleaming bare metal and dark-blue cheat lines, rumbled forward. Soon the nose rose off the ground and the engines powered the aircraft forward into the sky. Within a few minutes, the sound of roaring radial piston engines had faded away, leaving the Kentish countryside to the quiet that had reigned before.

* * *

Harry glanced at the the cheap Timex watch he was wearing, usually he wore two, one set to Greenwich Mean Time, the other one he adjusted as he passed through time zones, which was unnecessary here. After four hours in the air, he'd visually sighted Tangier, one of the northern points of Morcco. Following the Moroccan coast down past Rabat and then across the country, clipping the corner of Algeria and the disputed Western Sahara. Now, nearly nine hours out of Kent, according to the navigation system, they had just crossed a major Mauritanian town called Kiffa and had less than two hours to go.

He glanced around the cockpit. Jock had vanished to the galley, and Nadya was slouched in her seat, a small light on above her head and her mind obviously occupied by a book. The distant, comforting, drone of the four radials crept up to the cockpit, echoing in the cargo hold. For the whole journey they had continued turning over perfectly, not a single missed beat.

"You okay?" Nadya asked, glancing up at Harry, who had gone back to staring at the night sky.

"Yeah, 'bout seventy-five miles from the Mali border." Harry replied.

"That wasn't an answer was it?" she stated.

"Not really feeling anything right now. Just considering that we've got about five-fifty miles to go, less than two hours." Harry shrugged; "A little surprised you're going along with this trip."

"What do you think I did the moment I had my Taifun flying and enough cash for fuel and hotels? I took two weeks off and spent my time touring Europe." Nadya laughed; "I've always been happy to go along on an adventure."

"Hah! Sounds a bit like me." replied Harry; "The person who managed to get into the armed forces aged fifteen. And in case you want a bit of advice, always have a good forger on hand to sort out all the little bits of paper that get in a person's way."

"At fifteen you employed a forger?" Nadya said incredulously.

"At eleven, he was already buying and selling fighter aircraft off various air forces, mainly the Indonesians." Jock stated, walking in with a flask of coffee for Harry and a mug of tea for Nadya. "If you don't mind Harry, I'm going to get a bit of kip, give me a yell when we get near Sierra Leone."

"Thanks Jock, shouldn't be too long now." Harry said, accepting the flask.

"Thanks." Nadya added, taking her mug of tea.

"By the way lass, I hope Harry hasn't dragged you away from family." Jock commented from the door.

"No, no, I was intending on vanishing for the weekend. My adoptive father knows I will periodically take a weekend off, go off on a Friday, do whatever I want for a couple of days and arrive back on a Monday." Nadya waved off his concern, noting Harry raising an eyebrow at the phrase 'adoptive father'.

"Adoptive?" he asked after Jock had left.

"I had a conversation with someone who had grown up with no family worth speaking of and had grown up rather alone. It made something of an impact on me, realising that despite lacking parents of my own, that someone had been giving me all the parental care he could for years." replied Nadya.

"I'm touched." said Harry, raising his flask in a salute to her; "I believe you received my bit of emotion for the decade."

They both burst out laughing, Nadya at Harry's comment, Harry simply because the laughter was infectious. Over the next couple of hours, he taught her how to fly the aircraft, taking it off autopilot and handing over control to her for a while as they turned slightly to the west for Sierra Leone. As a type rating instructor on single and multi-engined warbirds, single and multi-engined combat jets and the Constellation, Harry was fairly confident in his teaching, as teaching was one thing apart from flying and killing that he'd been good at. Nadya also made a good pupil with an instinctive touch when it came to aircraft.

" _Golf-Charlie-Oscar-November-India, do you read me, over._ " buzzed over the radio, a deeply South African Afrikaans accent.

"Reading you loud and clear. Identify." Harry replied.

" _This is the Executive Outcomes officer in the tower at Lungi. I am recommending that you turn west over the Atlantic coast and come down that way because RUF ground forces have been sighted in the region you are about to overfly._ " came the response.

"Roger, accepting re-routing." Harry said, banking the Constellation around to starboard to bring them over the Atlantic.

" _When you get over, come straight down to the airport, we've made sure that you're clear to land straight away. A vehicle will be illuminated by a green flare when you have landed to lead you to the unloading stand._ "

"Copy."

Soon the airfield's lights appeared in Harry's vision. He gently eased the Constellation a few miles out to sea and lined up with the runway, coming in low and slow, while keeping the speed well above a stall. He didn't want to stall and plough into the sea, but he didn't want a heavy landing with the amount of ordnance in the back.

Jock had joined the cockpit crew after his brief sleep and was reading out distances until the undercarriage descended and the flaps lowered. The Constellation rumbled down out of the sky, flames at the engine exhausts marking its passage in the night sky. With a puff of smoke, the aircraft touched down and began to slow, Harry gently applying the brakes, carefully not to jolt the aircraft or boil the brakes themselves.

At the end of the runway, a flare was lit up revealing a big military truck. Harry slowed and followed it, turning around a loop back onto the runway and trundled down it, turning left onto the the stand where they were lit up by dozens of lights from various vehicles and a spotlight. Shutting down the engines, they climbed out of the cockpit into the cargo hold, lighting it up with torches.

Jock opened the cargo door as a cargo lift was wheeled up.

"Nadya, d'you want to get some rest. It doesn't look like we need much help." Harry commented as he surveyed the people around the aircraft.

"Sure." she agreed, yawning and stretching before heading for the bunk room.

"Jock, make sure we don't give them a soft time." Harry commented as the cargo lift began to rise with several people on it; "We wouldn't want them to think we're an easy lot to walk on."

"I can do that." he grinned; "Preparing Regimental Sergeant Major Jock. RIGHT! YOU LOT, GET MOVING. START GETTING THIS BLASTED CARGO MOVED. NOW!"

Harry grinned as people started scurrying around like frightened rabbits at Jock's barks and bellows. He turned away, intent on getting some food as he heard another bellow;

"AND MOVE THOSE FUEL BOWSERS UP HERE SMARTISH! GET HER FUELLED UP!"

* * *

Nadya slid back the curtain covering the bunk bed she'd claimed, rolling out and dropping on her feet onto the the floor of the cabin. Sliding her feet into a pair of walking boots, having slept fully dressed, she slipped out into the corridor from the cargo bay, faint aromas of food coming from the galley. She poked her head around the door to sea Harry busy at a small cooker.

"Morning Nadya." he greeted her.

"Morning." she replied; "Something smells good."

"Me or the food?" Harry asked with a smirk, earning an elbow in the side.

"Definitely the food." said Nadya with a snobbish sniff.

"Watch it or I won't feed you." he mock-threatened.

A few minutes later, she was munching at one of Harry's breakfast sandwiches, a couple of slices of French Toast with bacon-wrapped sausages between them.

"Where's Jock?" Nadya asked after a couple of mouthfuls as Harry put the coffee machine on.

"Practising his accountancy skills." Harry said cryptically.

"Do you ever give a straight answer?" enquired Nadya, rolling her eyes.

"Once a decade." responded Harry.

"Harry, just finished doing my examining." the devil himself said, poking his head around the door; "If I'm right and I think I am, the value's there and I've got a Certificate of Origin signed by the big cheese so no problems there."

"Good. Everything good with the cargo?" Harry asked.

"Yep, they're happy that everything works, there are some enquiries about a further shipment and a private enquiry about an acquisition." Jock stated.

"You two never talk straight, do you?" Nadya interrupted.

"Plausible deniability lass." Jock shrugged; "Her Majesty's Government has a fair idea what we're up to and quietly supports us, but it's always better to be careful."

"There are times when paranoia is simply common sense." Harry advised, giving her a penetrating look.

"I can understand that." agreed Nadya, while mentally running through what she didn't know. They hadn't discussed the cargo in any explicit terms and she hadn't seen it beyond unmarked crates. They hadn't discussed the destination until the last minute. The payment hadn't been discussed in any explicit terms, nor the receivers of the cargo.

"Mhmm. And Harry, can I vaguely recommend that we leave fairly quickly. Apparently some rather uncultured types have found out about us being here and believe that removing us from the equation and neutralising the aircraft would prevent the cargo being unloaded, despite the fact that it already has." Jock said.

"Shall we head out and dissuade them?" Harry asked.

"No, leave that to our South African mercenary friends." Jock stated.

"Looks like our visit isn't going to be a long one." Nadya sighed; "Probably better for our health that we get going then."

"Indeed." Harry agreed; "Let's get her going."

They were just taxiing inland, down the runway to turn around and take off when a rocket-propelled grenade raced past them and detonated in the muddy scrub to their starboard side. Nadya flinched and Jock unstrapped himself, racing out of the cockpit and throwing open one of the port-side doors.

Opening up a hatch on a door-side sill, he lifted up their response. A GAU-19 rotary fifty-calibre machine-gun on a telescoping mount. A second rocket-propelled grenade gave him a target, and as the rocket thudded into the ground, showering the aircraft in earth, Jock let rip. The gun roared, fifty-calibre brass raining from the chute as he fired short bursts aimed through an ACOG sight.

No more RPGs followed, evidently the rocketeer was silenced, but still machine-gun fire erupted from the treeline, snapping past the aircraft, but burst after burst of gunfire at least kept their heads down. Then suddenly, the whine and thrum of a Mil Hind entered his ears, followed by a phat-phat-phat noise as it opened fire with the twenty-three millimetre gun pods on each side of the cockpit, then a mechanised roar from the Yak-B gatling gun.

In the cockpit, the two pilots headsets buzzed with traffic.

" _Constellation, go, go go. We'll keep you covered._ "

Nadya used the brake on the port undercarriage leg as Harry used the nose wheel steering to turn the aircraft around tightly, not bothering with the loop except for the first little bit of it. The Constellation wheeled around and he didn't hesitate, opening the throttles fully as Jock slammed the door closed and dropped the gun back into the compartment.

The cockpit was silent as Harry leaned forward over the controls, scanning the air around them as ever-diminishing sporadic bursts of tracer bespattered the sky. Soon he was able to release a sigh of relief and begin plotting a course to return to England.

"That was... interesting." Nadya stated.

"Yeah." Harry grinned, adrenaline leaving his system as they settled onto course and he set the autopilot.

"I suppose Churchill was right, nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." Nadya quoted.

"Actually there is." Jock interrupted, walking in and dropping into the flight engineer's seat; "Shooting back with result."

He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin wallet.

"Lass, Harry and I took the liberty of setting up your payment in an account in a private Zurich bank. The manager's ex-British special forces and manages part of our holdings." said Jock; "This contains the details of the account and how to contact the account manager. He's aware that there's a new account holder."

Nadya accepted the wallet, glancing inside to find a card and some small wodges of paperwork which she glanced over. Nothing saying how much was in the account.

"Not wishing to be rude, but can I ask how much you're paying me for this trip?" she asked.

"Exactly the same share as the other five of us involved in the shipment." Jock said unhelpfully as he began to scan the myriad of gauges he had before him, exactly four-dozen of them in fact.

"Harry?" Nadya raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well..." Harry began with the air of someone discussing an uncomfortable subject; "About eight-hundred and thirty-three thousand US dollars. And before you object out of selflessness, we always split the takings, half to the unit funds, and the other half between those who participated in the acquisition of the cargo and its distribution."

"Okay, okay." Nadya raised her hands in mock surrender; "It's still enough to set me up for life."

"Good." replied Harry with a firm nod; "It gives you the ability to make choices in life of what you want to do, not what your bank account says you need to do. Within certain boundaries of course. There are cars and houses that could easily drain that, but with careful use, yes, it could keep you comfortable for life."

"I've already chosen what I want to do, and discussed it with Pa." she said; "He agrees. I intend to join the RAF."

"Ambitious." Jock noted from his seat; "I only took up flying when Harry passed his obsession onto me. Neither of us have done all of the boot-polish and square-bashing training."

Nadya had already had a fair idea that despite Harry's use of an RAF rank, he was no such thing. Scar down one cheek of indicative of a blade wound. Hint of a bulge under the left-hand side of any jacket of jumper he wore, probably a sidearm, something he shared with Jock who also always had the same bulge on his waistband. And the probability that the cargo they had delivered was arms.

"Just going to comment, Cranwell doesn't start accepting recruits until February. Since I'm going to be in Germany most of the time with my posting, there are some things I can teach you." Harry offered; "Though as Jock said, that doesn't include square-bashing or polishing boots.

"I've already been brushing up on a few things. The good thing about living with an ex-military guardian who runs a hunting business is that I've already learnt a fair amount. Map reading and navigation, shooting, plus my own flying, in which navigation is done with map, protractor, ruler and pencil." Nadya explained.

"Ever shot an assault rifle?" Jock asked curiously; "That'll come up in training."

"Jah, my adoptive father is an ex-British Army of the Rhine soldier, he has a 'Red License', which allows him nearly all types of weapons, so I've used revolvers, semi-automatic handguns, his old L1A1 battle rifle, American M4 carbines, Eastern Bloc firearms, and of course, hunting rifles." Nadya smirked.

"Hand to hand combat?" said Jock.

"Not much, as far as I know the areas of the body susceptible to damage. Translate as 'kick them in the crotch." Nadya added, turning to give him a look.

"Damn, Harry, remind me to not piss her off." Jock shuddered.

"Yeah yeah Jock. Remember who we are." Harry rolled his eyes.

"UK Special Forces?" Nadya half-asked half-stated.

"How did you know." said Jock flatly, all jocularity gone.

"Educated guess. You may not recall, but I encountered you both at Fairford in '93, and I noticed at least you, Jock, had a holstered pistol. Every time I've encountered you or Harry, you both carry holstered pistols." Nadya explained; "Harry has a long-healed cut on his cheek, too clean to be anything but a blade wound. I encountered Harry at Accuracy International in Portsmouth although we didn't have time to speak, but I overheard him mention being on the ground in Mogadishu despite the fact that the government of the UK didn't acknowledge any participation except for peacekeeping."

"Lass, a very great many people are either going to hate your guts or love you. I can't decide which." Jock said slowly; "I suppose we should reintroduce ourselves, Staff Sergeant Andrew 'Jock' McCabe, 22 SAS and Captain Hadrian James Potter, 22 SAS."

Nadya looked awfully smug.


	14. Chapter 14

**05:00, over Germany, Wednesday 18** **th** **December 1996**

A burst of afterburner the keep the turn sustained even as the black Hawker Hunter began to run out of speed. Then the pilot suddenly rolled out of the turn and climbed sharply. Harry narrowed his eyes even as he followed with a half-roll and climb. The greater speed he carried through in the afterburning Super Sabre meant it was a useless move... but suddenly the Hunter wasn't there. As he had been climbing, it had dropped the nose and entered a dive.

He glanced in his mirror. The night-vision goggles didn't lend him quality vision, but already he could see the Hunter in the dark, circling in for an attack. She'd pulled out of the dive and looped up onto his tail. Harry slammed the 'burner on full and pulled back on the stick into a hard climb, knowing the Hunter couldn't follow him with the climbing acceleration he was getting.

Unbeknownst to him, Nadya had spotted patches of cloud drifting in and selected one of them to prevent a visual for Harry when he turned around and dived back down. The Super Sabre fell through the sky, hunting for the Hunter when suddenly, he spotted it out of the corner of his eye in a dive behind him. Pretending not to see, Harry waited until they were both flicking back and forth across the sky, himself 'searching' for the Hunter and Nadya trying to get a fix on him.

Then suddenly, the under-fuselage air brake of the Super Sabre opened. The Hunter overshot as Harry closed the throttle and brought his guns to bear. Then there was the automated message from the weapons simulation system. He'd hit the Hunter and taken it out. As the Super Sabre began to stall, the nose rose. Harry jammed the afterburner on full and gained enough airspeed to roll into a dive without experiencing the almost always fatal 'Sabre Dance' stall.

Harry gently circled the his Super Sabre, watching as Nadya was forced to do the forfeit for a lost fight. Doing a night landing at the old airfield at Pütnitz... over and over again. It both gave her experience landing and taking off in the jet at night, as well as encouraging her to fight harder to try and avoid the forfeit. Only once had she managed to take him out.

The quite massive favour Harry owed her was being paid with these flying lessons. After several intense days flying the Hawker Hunter, he was happy to let Nadya fly it solo, though he shadowed her, watching, advising. Now, he was watching through night-vision goggles as she put the aircraft down again on the illuminated runway. Steady, straight, enough speed to push back into the air if it all went wrong. Then she opened the air brake and brought the aircraft onto a taxiway.

Then there was a roar as a third fast jet appeared, going awfully fast.

" _Pirate, if that's you hovering around in the '100, get on the bloody ground now!_ " barked a voice over the radio.

"Jock, what the hell's wrong?" Harry demanded, seeing the other aircraft briefly, with the distinctive, sinister wing-shape of the Saab Draken.

" _It's a fucking emergency. We need you on the coms gear at your place. I tried calling you, but obviously you're out of range of your telephone._ "

Harry recognised the urgency, and as did Nadya, moving the Hunter onto the stand, out of the way. He brought the Super Sabre down, going in fast, with the brake 'chute billowing behind him. A couple of fabric hangars had been erected, each of sufficient length for two jets, so he pulled into one, and was out of the cockpit in moments, even as the engine was spooling down.

The Draken was down moments later and parked in the other hanger, with Nadya moving in behind it in the Hunter. Harry swung into one of the two cars he'd had shipped out from England around the time of the mine raid, a dark-red V12 Jaguar XJ and raced over to the second hangar. Nadya, having heard the brief radio chatter, moved with alacrity, in the front of the car as Jock leapt out of the Draken and dashed over and climbed into the back.

"I trust there's a real emergency." Harry asked.

"In that the number of hostages is estimated so far at about five-hundred, maybe more." Jock stated.

"Shit." Harry cursed, gunning the Jag down the taxiway from the stand and onto the road that ran around the airfield; "Nadya, I suggest you hold on."

He floored the car, the powerful headlamps searching out the forest they raced through. The Jaguar would once have had a six-litre V12. Harry had acquired a seven-litre twin-supercharged engine from Lister for that bit more power. Exiting the forest, he slid the car around a ninety-degree turn, exiting the corner sideways with smoke pouring off the tyres before the car began to grip again.

Keeping a careful eye out as he drove through a small town, as Harry hit the main road, he floored it again. The land opened up into a marshy area with a pair of bridges across it, one carrying a railway and the other the road. There were few cars around at that hour of the morning and he could really get moving. Sounds of ripping calico left the fast-moving Jag as he made a split-second decision not to try cutting across a town but just to stick to the main road.

Harry was lucky with the lack of traffic and the fact that the main road carried right on down to the Old Town of Rostock, being able to pull off straight into the streets near his house. Finally, the Jag ceased roaring and spitting as he pulled up to the front of his house. Vaulting over the bonnet, he locked the car the moment he heard the other two get out and within moments had unlocked the front door. Dashing into his study, Harry smacked the light switch and grabbed the remote for a television set into a bookcase and turned it on.

He also turned on a set of speakers and a microphone which had a straight-through connection to SAS HQ, but though the connection was accepted, there was little sound except for a distant copy of what he was getting on the TV as Jock and Nadya piled in.

"Not good." Harry muttered as the news of the Japanese Embassy in Peru was appearing.

"What's worse is that there are hundreds of diplomats from most nations there. In a few minutes most nations will be either pressing for merciful negotiation or guns-blazing-no-quarter-raise-the-black-flag." a voice contributed from England.

"Mhmm. You need us out there Lion?" Harry asked.

"Not immediately. Your colleagues are already on their way." replied Lion; "I just need to explain to the Americans why there are are a missing F-15 Eagle and F-15 Strike Eagle en-route to Peru."

"They really shouldn't learn from me." Harry muttered.

"They stole a pair of F-15s."

"I sort-of am a bad example. I had some of my guys steal an Israeli Phantom a while ago." Harry admitted.

"I know. And the Israelis want to know where that aircraft is because you didn't give it back." Lion growled.

"Tell them it's classified." was Jock's helpful input, heading to Harry's mini-fridge for a bottle of beer as Harry himself began to pace. Hours later Harry was pacing. Jock was leaning back in an armchair and Nadya was half-collapsed across a beanbag chair.

"I feel so fucking helpless here." Harry snarled at the television; "CO doesn't want me out there but I can't do jack here to try and help the situation."

"Calm. Down." Jock ordered; "We can make objective judgements here. We can watch the thermometer and discuss the temperature of the furnace. The others can't if they're leaning right up against the furnace."

Harry glared at him but eventually stilled.

"The best thing they can do is protract the siege. Try and negotiate out hostages. With that many in there they can't risk an assault without major casualties." he stated.

"And it gives the security forces more time to plan and practice." Nadya added; "We can only hope that the hostage takers are willing to hold out for a while and are mentally stable."

"Yeah." Harry said without much hope; "I need a coffee or twelve. Anyone else?"

"I'm on the beer." Jock replied.

"I'll pass." Nadya waved off his offer.

Hours later, Nadya had proven herself useful when the complex counter-terrorism plans the two were coming up with needed holes poking in them with common sense. However, it had annoyed Harry greatly that there was nothing he could do but wait as events developed in Peru.

"Harry, get some sleep." Jock said, giving him a look as he watched Harry draining another pint mug of coffee, black this time, not bothering with milk or sugar, just large amounts of coffee.

"But-" Harry began.

"Take his advice. You look like crap." Nadya said bluntly.

Harry sighed and dropped onto the sofa, draping himself along it after kicking off his combat boots and fleece, leaving him in t-shirt, camouflage trousers and his socks. With a deft movement he unholstered his pistol and slid it under a cushion. Nadya and Jock exchanged a glance five minutes later as Harry was fast asleep, the TV still burbling away in the background. Ten minutes later, there was a burst of noise from the speakers followed by two gunshots as Harry went from fast asleep to firing in a quarter of a second, shooting out the speakers and back to asleep in another quarter of a second.

"Yeah, neat reflexes." Jock commented.

"Is that normal?" Nadya asked.

"For him, yes. Especially when he's on the coffee and long hours." Jock explained.

Over the next few days, Harry took to taking his frustrations out on some nearby NATO firing ranges, chewing through twenty and thirty-millimetre shells at a quite prodigious rate. However, as Peru dragged on, soon Nadya was departing for Cranwell and he was already two months into duties with JG73.


	15. Chapter 15

**February 1997, RAF Cranwell, Yorkshire.**

Nadya stood stock still in the crowd of civilians aspiring to be pilots on the parade ground at Cranwell. Dressed in a simple long-sleeved polo shirt, jeans, walking boots and a fleece zipped up against the wonderful Yorkshire weather. The other people were moving around restlessly despite the gruff sergeant's orders to stand still. They were, as yet, an undisciplined rabble. Nadya did have one advantage, having spent enough time around Jock McCabe who could go from upper-class drawl to blunt, gruff Glaswegian in a matter of moments, she was immune to the barks of the sergeant.

"Officer Cadet Falke." her name was roared across the parade ground.

"Sergeant." she replied, snapping to attention.

"Military family?" the sergeant asked, approaching her.

"Adoptive father, British Army of the Rhine, retired, sergeant." Nadya answered.

"Flying experience?"

"A moderate amount sergeant." was the immediate reply.

"Specifics Officer Cadet Falke!" he demanded.

"Twenty hours on multi-engined piston aircraft. Couple of hundred on single-engined fast tourer, a thousand on gliders, a couple of dozen on single-engined piston warbirds and over two-hundred hours day and night on classic fast jets, sergeant." said Nadya smartly; "It's recorded in my logbook which is with my luggage."

"I should like to read that." he said.

Since the Sierra Leone mission, as Harry continued flying with and against her in fast jets, when he judged her ready for the responsibility, he offered her ownership of the Hunter for fifty-thousand pounds, which was certainly far less than its actual value, though she still had his engineers look after the aircraft. Her little Messerschmitt was by no means upstaged, as it simply could do things that the Hunter couldn't, like landing on a postage-stamp of grass and not burn more oil than an Iraqi retreat.

With the Hunter providing her with fast transport, a fun ride and something to keep learning on, over the months since she'd begun flying jets, she'd put easily a hundred hours on the aircraft. She'd also managed to blag some joyrides in the back of JG73's beautiful MiGs after proving her mettle in an F-4 Phantom Harry had mysteriously 'procured', one that was in Israeli camouflage minus the roundels. Her flying in that earned the respect of several of Harry's JG73 colleagues, as the MiG program's pilots were, to a man, F-4 pilots.

And last she'd heard, the Special Air Service still hadn't returned the aircraft. Nadya stood at ease as the sergeant moved onto other officer cadets with

* * *

 **April 1997, Germany**

"Absteigen dreissig fuss." Harry ordered over the radio; 'Descend thirty feet'. They suspected that the Americans were going to cheat by listening on their radio, so they were abandoning the language of NATO, English, for German.

There was no need for a reply as he pushed the MiG's nose down and the other three aircraft of the flight followed him. The descent of thirty feet didn't sound much, but with the flight already at fifty feet off the conifer-lined valleys and crests, it was a fairly large descent. They pushed their engines to full dry power, determined to wring every bit of potential from their aircraft.

The primitive radar was of little use to them, but they knew the vague area of their opponents, mainly due to the fact that the previous evening when their opponents, who were staying at Rostock, had been planning their combat air patrol, Harry had bugged the briefing room. The MiGs were using the landscape and the terrain itself to mask their approach until they could break into a Visual Range Engagement. Their opponents were F-16 Fighting Falcons of the United States Air Force.

" _Fünf Falken, null-drei-null plus vier tausend fuss._ " radioed one of the other pilots; 'Five Falcons, zero-three-zero, one thousand feet above.'

"Aufsteig!" Harry barked; 'Climb'.

They lit up their afterburners, shattering the F-16s formation as the MiGs climbed straight through it. Harry swerved his helmet display onto a Fighting Falcon, about ten degrees off his nose and 'fired' an R-73 AA-11 missile, taking the Falcon out of the game immediately. The helmet allowed him to take shots in a ninety-degree circumference centred on the missile seeker head.

The Falcons were breaking, trying to gain back ground. The MiGs had also broken formation and were going after the Falcons n pairs, with Gustav Brack in his Fulcrum following Harry. Going through a high-G turn, Harry pushed his aircraft after an F-16, lighting both afterburners for a moment to keep the speed up. Then he pulled in behind the aircraft, which was too close for a clean missile shot.

The Falcon weaved across his nose and suddenly climbed before he could get a gun shot in. Bad move. As the Falcon lost speed, as did the MiG, and it was low-speed manoeuvrability that the MiG excelled at. Time for a party piece. Harry never flew with the G limiter on since he'd heard of a case of a plane going in because a G limiter had refused to let the pilot pull sufficient force to get the aircraft out intact.

He half rolled and pulled back, upside down to follow the F-16, which then went into an Immelmann before climbing again from the straight-and-level. Harry jerked the stick back and pushed open the throttles a bit. The nose rose and he dragged the sight across the F-16, 'firing' a burst from his thirty-millimetre cannon, followed by a second as he pitched back down, hard. The Pugachev's Cobra was a waste energy, but the psychological use of such a move was pretty good.

Harry slammed the stick over to port and pulled back as he spotted a Falcon closing in behind the other pair of MiGs, and his own aircraft danced over its wing-tip and fell into the fight, followed by his wingman. Letting Brack take the lead, the rear Falcon turned out of the normal bore sight of a missile, but was taken out moments later by a wide-angle missile shot.

Within moments, the remaining F-16s were overwhelmed as they were split apart and deprived of mutual support. That was lucky, because by that time, the MiG-29s were approaching Bingo fuel, the amount to get back to base safely. The five F-16s, bloodied in their first encounter with the Fulcrums, formed up into a flight alongside them to head back to Rostock.

"That was quick and bloody." Harry commented over the radio in English.

" _You can say that again bud._ " replied one of the Americans, confirming they had been listening on the Fulcrum pilots' channel.

* * *

 **April 1997, RAF Cranwell, Yorkshire**

Nadya was lying on her bed, still dressed in woodland camouflage from the day's exercises, flicking through a copy of the pilot's manual for the Super Sabre, watching in mild amusement over the top of the book as her roommate, an English Officer Cadet called Jenny Miller, lost her head with panic.

"I mean I've never even flown a plane and they expect me to be able to answer all these questions on theory of flight!" she repeated for the nth time; "I mean you're fine with so much time flying-"

"Jenny. Calm down." Nadya ordered sharply, causing her roommate to freeze. Stretching slightly, she slid off her bed and started digging through her personal kitbag. After turfing out a flying suit, anti-G suit and a couple of books, producing an Airfix box proclaiming the contents to be a model F-86 Sabre. "We've got the weekend off, I brought this in case I got too bored. These are actually quite useful for teaching. And for your information, the amount of flying I've done has the instructors expecting far more of me, so it's not easy."

"What do you mean useful for teaching?" asked Jenny.

"That in this box, as yet unmade, I have a scale model of an aircraft with which to demonstrate certain concepts." sighed Nadya.

"And what's in it for you?" said Jenny.

"It makes me look good and it should reduce the amount of paracetamol I have to take for headaches by about fifty-percent. Or if I felt being sentimental, it makes me feel good about myself." Nadya explained patiently.

"Is everything so mercenary for you?" Jenny asked dryly.

"Mostly." Nadya shrugged; "Sometimes in life you can only look out for yourself, and maybe a choice few friends. It's a practical attitude because most of the time people who try to make life good for everyone end up mucking it up. Just look at communism."

Then her phone rang and she snatched it up.

"Falke." she greeted whoever was on the other end.

" _Hey Nadya, Harry here._ " the other person replied.

"Hey Harry, how are you?" Nadya said, a slight smile appearing on her face.

" _Not bad. Cold and slightly damp. I'm currently on the pitching deck of a US aircraft carrier as they refuel my Phantom. I'm technically on leave but it looks like the balloon's about to go up. I've got Jock in a second aircraft and the CO in the back._ " he replied; " _The Yanks are on scene with their people, but the politicians want my team to go in with the locals._ "

"Oh God." she breathed, a flash of anxiety going through her. It sounded as if the SAS were going for a second embassy assault and, no doubt, Harry would be at the front.

" _Relax, we're professionals, CRW trained remembered. But if I don't get back-_ " Harry began.

"Don't bother saying it." Nadya growled; "Because if you don't get back I'll kill you."

" _Thanks luv._ " replied Harry, chuckling; " _I've got about five minutes before a catapult launch, so take care._ "

" _You too. I'll speak to you soon._ " Nadya stated.

The line went dead and Nadya slowly sank onto her bed, only half-noticing the white knuckles her fist clenched around her phone.

"What's happened. You've gone white as a sheet." Jenny asked with true concern.

"I can't tell you." Nadya said immediately; "I might be able to explain within the next few days."

* * *

Harry put his phone into his pocket, climbing into the front seat of the Phantom. Behind the SAS CO got into the WSO's cockpit behind him. Mentally he knew what was coming up, a high-risk firefight in an enclosed space with non-combatants present, but he was concentrated on the nearer future.

The two F-4K Phantoms whined into life, Harry moving first onto the catapult. A deck hand locked the nose wheel into the launch bar, allowing Harry to exercise the control surfaces and briefly run the engines up to full dry thrust against a blast plate which rose from the deck behind the Phantom. He lowered the folded outer wings and waited.

With the deck pitching up and down as the carrier turned into a fifteen knot headwind, Harry knew he had to get this one right and to trust in the man with the launch button. Instruments checked and set. He threw a typical British lackadaisical salute to the catapult officer, keeping an eye on two more deck hands who moved around the aircraft, quickly checking everything was secured and working. Thumbs up signal, all was ready.

Forty-one thousand pounds of thrust erupted from the rear of the Phantom as he ran the afterburners up to full power. The ship's bow climbed one peak of a wave and descended into the trough of another. Suddenly the aircraft was slammed forward, going from stood still to approaching two-hundred miles-an-hour indicated airspeed, actual probably about one-fifty. The Phantom was flung down the deck of the carrier and off the bow at the moment it hit the peak of the next wave. Perfectly timed.

With a few minutes until Jock followed with the second Phantom containing himself and a large amount of equipment in the rear cockpit, Harry decided to turn towards Howard Air Force Base in Panama where a 'civilian' Gulfstream would convey them across South America. Jock would just have to catch up.

He had little idea of how much Nadya was worrying for him.

* * *

 **May 1997, RAF Cranwell**

Muttering curses under her breath, Nadya stormed into her room in what was evidently a foul mood. Jenny looked up from her desk where she was revising theory of flight, raising an eyebrow at her roommate's behaviour.

"Bloody Philips!" Nadya exclaimed, throwing herself onto her bed.

"Philips at it again?" Jenny sighed. They were a hundred days or just over fourteen weeks into the thirty-two week officer training course and one of the cadets was getting up all the female's noses.

"If he tries pulling one of his cheap lines on me, I. Will. Shoot. Him." Nadya growled.

"I wouldn't recommend that." said one of the female teaching officers who was stood by the open door; "But your concerns have been noted Officer Cadet Falke."

"Thank you ma'am." Nadya nodded having leapt out of her bed.

"I also have an letter for you. Addressed from MI5 headquarters." the officer added, handing a plain envelope addressed in blocky letters to her with the words 'Thames House' on the top of the envelope.

Nadya silently slit it open and flicked open the letter, letting out a sigh of relief as several weeks of stress suddenly left her. It was writted by Harry, explaining that he'd lost her phone number when his phone was destroyed during 'a firefight' and that he'd finished a brief stint in hospital for reasons he hadn't explained. He'd had to return immediately to Rostock as he'd begged family emergency leave and hadn't had a chance to contact her. There was a final request that she destroy the letter.

Folding it over twice to make it more compact, reached into her pocket for a zippo lighter and quickly set fire to the letter, tossing it into the metal bin.

"Classified material." she explained, finally relaxing for the first time in weeks.


	16. Chapter 16

**September 1997, RAF Cranwell**

Harry, dressed in neatly pressed and anonymous RAF blues, entered with the enteurage of RAF administration officers to the meeting room at Cranwell. With an armful of folders, he was rather curious as to how his favourite pupil was doing, and it gave him a chance to practise his infiltration skills. They didn't ask his name, he had convinced everyone that he was just a faceless Air Command, High Wycombe administrator. They hadn't even bothered to check his ID.

For hours, they poured over the files of the various crews, surprising Harry as, in alphabetical order, Nadya was skipped right over, being left until very last. Several cadets were relegated to rather dull and grunt jobs, ground jobs. A handful were put forward to helicopter training and just two were going onto pre-jet training on Tucanos.

"Now for our interesting case, one Officer Cadet Karin-Nadya Falke. East German born. Recently became a British citizenship through adoption by long-time guardian Colour Sergeant George Roberts. Lived in West Germany, now Germany, since 1980, a trained pilot already." said the chief training officer; "She is registered as owning a Messerschmitt Bf108 Taifun and a Hawker Hunter. She hasn't discussed who taught her to fly fast jets, but she has time as pilot in command on Phantoms and Super Sabres, and in her spare time has been seen studying American flight manuals."

"Can you elaborate on American flight manuals?" asked one of the other officers.

"She has copies for the Phantom and Super Sabre, one clean for each and one she has annotated." explained the officer responsible the female trainees. "Whoever her teacher was, they did a bloody good job. I asked a few questions, she has the safety protocols drilled into her mind and answers instantly. Falke also has an expert knowledge of flight theory and all the the navigation, radio and other protocols associated with flying and has been teaching several other students who have formed a small team."

"Leader?"

"Definitely. Not massively dominant, but she's always the calm, cool head who has a clinical view of things and an encyclopedic knowledge of a lot of the important information." nodded the same woman; "In the field she naturally becomes a leader, not forcing the other cadets to yield to her, but they listen to her because she's got the experience. Her marksmanship is unmatched, having been around rifles since a young age as her adoptive father is a hunter."

"So of the cadets we've decided on, where does she rank?" Harry asked.

"Above average with superior areas." stated the female officer.

"Posting?" asked another officer.

"Subject to a test with an instructor, straight to RAF Valley. Tucanos would be a waste of time." said one of the Central Flying School pilots; "I took OC Falke up during weekend leave in one of our birds and she flew it meticulously until the moment I told her to do what she wanted. That was the point at which she wrung the aircraft out all over the sky. The Bf108 is a powerful cabin tourer, and she knows how to wield an aircraft."

"If she has this experience, then you need to expect more from her." Harry advised; "If she's been through some form of training, then treat it as such."

"Are you a pilot instructor? Are you qualified to make such a judgement?" demanded an old fogey in a Squadron Leader's uniform.

"Yes." Harry replied, smirking; "In the last eight months, I have done about six-hundred flights on fast jets, totalling nearly fifteen-hundred hours. I'm a qualified instructor on several fast jets, including OPFOR aircraft."

Empty boasts were rare in the RAF where such things could be investigated, so nobody questioned him. Within minutes they had agreed that on the far side of some pretty demanding flying tests, Nadya was to go on to RAF Valley and BAE Hawks.

Harry walked out of the meeting room, heading through the halls of RAF Cranwell and out to the airfield where his own Hawker Sea Fury was parked up. Disposing the RAF blues into a bag in the rear cockpit, Harry grabbed his flying suit from the bag and slipped into it.

Proudly displayed on his breast was the badge of his current unit, 'Steinhoff' Wing, and just next to it the modified clubs card patch with a MiG-29, that of the first Squadron of JG73. On his left shoulder were a further two patches, one as a MiG-29 instructor and a second for achieving a thousand hours. With four months left with JG73, he was likely to hit two-thousand hours.

Other awards achieved wearing that suit were stuck on his right shoulder. US Air Force Weapons School graduate's patch and a US Navy Fighter Weapons School TOPGUN badge. Harry was just climbing up onto the wing when a familiar rumble of a piston engine sounded across the airfield. Entering the circuit was a dark-blue Messerschmitt Taifun. Stepping down from the Sea Fury's wing, Harry raised his aviator glasses and quickly confirmed his suspicions.

He perched himself on the wing of the Sea Fury as the Messerschmitt taxied in from the runway, swinging around on the stand and parking up no more than twenty feet from him. Harry waited as the front-hinged panel on the left-hand side of the canopy swung open. Dropping off the wingtip of the big fighter, Harry walked over to the Messerschmitt as the pilot peeled off a leather flying helmet, shaking her head to let a sheet of blonde hair loose.

"Harry!" she exclaimed, seeing him ducking under the engine nacelle of the Messerschmitt around to her side of the aircraft.

"Hey Nadya." Harry replied as she pulled him into a hug; "How's training going?"

"Somehow I think that you already know." Nadya said with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes; "I'm certain that you dropping in this close to my graduation is no coincidence and that you know more that I do."

"Maybe." Harry laughed; "But I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise."

"And I now know there's a surprise." replied Nadya before asking; "And you? How's the JG73 flying going?"

"Not bad. Italian Starfighters for dinner last night. Like the F-16 guys, they never seem to learn never to get into a low and slow close range guns and heat-seekers with a MiG." answered Harry; "Got my thousand hours patch in late April, having already put in five-hundred on test-flying one, now I'm flying over four hours a day, putting in about one-and-a-half in the early morning, another in the evening and the rest of the day either on air-defence QRA or going out on exercises or instructing."

"Anyway, where's Jock, usually I never see you without him around." asked Nadya; "He's not perched on a building with a rifle or something?"

"No, he's busy with work today." Harry shook his head.

* * *

Hermione Granger settled down at her desk in the library of Christ Church College Oxford. Having departed the magical world herself in 1993 after coming to the conclusion that the diary Harry had left her had, that wizarding Britain was beyond hope, she'd crammed to do her GCSE exams. Already with a spread of high-grade OWLs and NEWTs, she was familiar with having to do lots of exams and completed ten GCSEs at A-star the year following her graduation from Hogwarts and repeated the feat with her A-levels. She had just one academic year left at Oxford to finish her degree in jurisprudence.

"Mind if I join you?" asked a gruff, Glaswegian-accented voice.

"Mind if I ask why?" she replied, not even looking up from the copy of the Magna Carta she was studying.

"A mutual friend asked me to speak to you and apologise for being unable to visit himself." was the cryptic response.

She looked up. The man in front of her was fairly striking. Hair of an indeterminate light colour cut close to his head, with a jagged scar through it. Wearing sturdy walking boots, cargo trousers and dark-green hoodie.

"Speak plainly. You obviously have a reason to be here, so get it over with." Hermione growled, irritated that her studying time in the last, most critical year of her studying was being interrupted.

He promptly sat down and took a small mouthful from a flask. Nearly a decade ago it had been, but the memory of the imposter Alastor Moody and the year that her best friend vanished were too fresh in Hermione's mind, and her hand instantly dropped to the wand concealed in the waistband of her jeans.

"Don't worry, it's a whisky-honey liquor, not polyjuice." he stated.

Her hand half drew it.

"Who the hell are you." Hermione said quietly but with an undertone of venom.

"Anthony McKenzie." Jock lied, using the name he usually used in public.

"Then Mister McKenzie, how the hell do you know of polyjuice?" she demanded.

"Secret of Her Majesty's Government I'm afraid." he replied.

"You know perfectly well who I am, now answer the question." ordered Hermione.

"I work for Her Majesty's Government alongside a gentleman called 'Harry Potter', I believe you know the name." said Jock; "As to how I know what polyjuice is, Grindelwald compromised your little enclaves in the Second World War by dint of his arrogance in using the Enigma encryption machines."

"Harry was recruited by Her Majesty's Government." Hermione stated. It was not a question.

"Yes."

"As, I assume was Sirius Black. He now sits in the House of Lords, has a personal friendship with the Queen and works with any Prime Minister who comes through the door." Hermione stated, once again, not a question.

"You are very perceptive."

"Mister MacKenzie, don't patronise me. This is simple common sense." replied Hermione.

"To be precise, we arranged his escape from Azkaban." Jock elaborated.

"Interesting... now, what I suspect is that your presence is to recruit me, yes?" asked Hermione.

"It is indeed. Once you complete your degree of course." nodded Jock; "A course training you as an intelligence officer, though I am informed they don't expect you to get involved in wetwork."

"Before this goes any further I want some proof of your identity and association with my friend... such the name 'granted' to him by the wizarding world, or his guardians." Hermione requested.

"Well I can start you out with the fact that he loathed being called the boy-who-lived and that we relocated the Dursley family to a particularly cold and isolated part of Canada and used polyjuice whenever you lot were around." Jock replied instantly; "Is that sufficient?"

"You pass... for now." answered Hermione slowly; "May I ask where Harry is now?"

"He requests that you don't kill him for his vanishing act." Jock stopped her.

"I won't, I watched the video cassette he left me and I understand why he left." Hermione replied.

"It was more than just his loss of hope in you lot, it was that Ma in Number Ten was putting pressure on our unit to deploy to Iraq immediately." Jock added.

"So, may I ask where my friend is?" Hermione asked, filing away the information she'd just been provided with. Harry, at least at that time, had obviously been with a combat unit, along with the man in front of her.

"You may." responded Jock.

"Where. Is. Harry." she growled through clenched teeth.

"Oh, why didn't you say?" enquired Jock.

"I did!" Hermione hissed.

"But you asked to ask, you didn't ask." he countered.

"Look. Tell me where he is or you'll spend the next few years doing a very good impression of a ferret, complete with the fur." he was threatened by the petite witch opposite him.

"I don't know." was his prompt answer.

"What. Do. You. Mean. You. Don't. Know." Hermione growled, hand twitching.

"I genuinely don't know. He's on a posting but on leave today. I have a faint suspicion that he's on a date." said Jock.

"A date? Who with? Last I knew he was too awkward to even talk with a girl on the subject of relationships." enquired Hermione, her naturally curiosity extending Jock's time as a human and lessening the chance of him ending up with fur.

"He's an espionage expert, he was never unable to talk to a girl on the subject of relationships." Jock laughed; "We had a second agent inside Hogwarts, Sirius Black was masquerading as one of the Durmstrang teachers and reliably informed me that Harry had both Fleur Delacour and Katie Bell on the go as 'friends with benefits'. And both knew about one-another."

"He what?" squeaked Hermione, going bright red.

"Yup. Couldn't have been prouder than when I was impersonating a journalist at the Yule Ball and saw him vanish into a heavily warded private bedroom on the night of the ball." Jock grinned, nearly bouncing in his chair; "And didn't leave until the next morning. Anyway, the current girlfriend I think he genuinely seriously likes but hasn't owned up to it yet, she's a cute German girl with a penchant for fast jets."

"Right... and why has he not approached me over the last few years?" she asked.

"So that you could concentrate on your studies and not worry about his work was one reason, another was simply that we've spent quite a lot of the last few years out of the country." shrugged Jock; "And because we suspected that it would take a few years for wizarding interest in you to cool down and make it safe to approach you. He intended to approach you when we got back from Bosnia but we confirmed you were still being tracked and we suspected your post was being intercepted."

"What?!" Hermione demanded.

"We're not completely sure what side, but Harry's words were that if anything happened to you he would 'blow the ever-living shit' out of the personal responsible." Jock replied, producing a card from his pocket; "My number and that of the unit's desk at the headquarters of the Security Service. Please do respond when you've had a think about my... our... offer."

"I will... Section Five Counterterrorism Unit." Hermione read off, and looked up. The man in front of her had vanished.

* * *

Harry and Nadya were just leaving the restraunt where they'd eaten that evening when Harry's new phone rang. Hitting the accept call button, he barked;

"Potter."

"Jock here. She'll think about it and not kill you on sight."

"Excellent." Harry replied before cutting the call.

"What was that?" Nadya asked curiously.

"An old school friend." Harry said cryptically.


	17. Chapter 17

__AN: Someone asked me who would play my OC in a feature film. I contemplated this for a while, considering Scarlett Johansson and dismissing her as too make-up laden, considering Rosamund Pike and dismissing her as being too much the English rose, then I found someone who I'd never heard of but looked right. Charlize Theron. There you go.__

* * *

 **July 1998, Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada**

All around the base, there was an intake of breath as, appearing in the circuit, trailing great plumes of grey-black smoke, the sinister shapes of Russia's infamous MiG-29 Fulcrums appeared, fully armed. The Luftwaffe-operated fighters flew in a eight-ship formation, one at the head of the arrow with one right behind him and three on each side for a single flyby and fast climb.

Circling in, they poured onto the runway in pairs, sleek and deadly. Looking distinctly odd, sat low on spindly undercarriage mounted with small, thick tyres, the aircraft rolled onto the stand at Nellis, in prime position outside the control tower. The flight lead was greeted first with the ground crew having him hold the brakes for them to chock the wheels. As soon as the crews were clear, one-by-one they started shutting down their engines.

Luftwaffe ground crew, flown in earlier that week with their equipment in German Air Force Boeing 707s, swarmed over the aircraft, moving in ladders for the cockpits, covering the engine intakes, pitot tubes and disarming the AA-11 Archer missiles each aircraft was carrying. Pushing up his cockpit canopy, Harry hit the release on his harness, making sure that the engineer leaning over him saw him disarming his ejector seat.

Uncoupling his oxygen tube and radio feed from the aircraft, Harry pulled his knees up to his chest, feet on the ejector seat and hauled himself up. The transatlantic hops had been tiring without air-to-air refuelling which would have made life easier and faster. Climbing out onto the tarmac, he was already aware that they were being swarmed by airmen from other nations. Peeling off his helmet, Harry pulled on a pair of aviators, smirking as the other German pilots rolled their eyes at him.

He couldn't look like a fighter jet pilot without the aviators.

"All right you lot, you can drool over our aircraft later." Harry barked; "Some of us need to get some food and sleep."

"Flight Lieutenant Potter?" asked a USAF Master Sergeant, reading off a clipboard.

"That's me." Harry replied.

"If you and your pilots would like to come with me. Accommodation is ready, I'm told there's a welcoming buffet for you, breakfast tomorrow is from zero-six hundred to zero-seven thirty, briefing at zero-eight-hundred and flightline at zero-nine hundred." said the Master Sergeant.

Harry produced a notepad and pen, scribbling down the next day's timetable. He grabbed his bag and SR-25 rifle that one of the ground crew offered him, having retrieved it from the back of one of the two MiG-29UB two-seaters they had flown out. The USAF NCOs quickly organised things, getting them to their barracks for the next two-and-a-bit months.

* * *

After a morning run before the returning desert heat made it unbearable, Harry showered and headed into the mess at Nellis. He was poring over the timetable for the exercises. Two Red Flags, one in July, one in August, and two Green Flags, one in July and August, one in August and September. Shouldn't be too bad and should be fun. He'd seen Starfighters, Vipers, Eagles, Tornadoes and Phantoms parked out on the stand, though even as he went on his run, he could see the Fulcrums behind metal fences surrounded by people. It was probably the first time many had seen a MiG-29 in the flesh.

He glanced up from the pile of paper as there was a loud sigh and someone settled into the seat opposite him.

"Guten morgen Gustav." Harry said.

"Is it?" Gustav Brack asked irritably. He hated everyone in the world until his third pint of coffee.

Harry snatched a carafe of coffee off a passing serving NCO and dumped it in front of his wingman.

"Better?" asked Harry.

"Danke."

Shifting aside the paperwork with the timetable for that days exercises for Brack to read, Harry was assembling a fairly meaningful breakfast when someone dropped into the seat next to him.

"Hello Harry."

"Nadya." Harry said with some surprise upon turning to see who was sat next to him; "I didn't expect to see you..."

"Neither did I to be honest." she replied, spearing a mushroom and a slice of sausage from his plate with a fork; "I was rather surprised at the end of my Hawk training at Valley to find a named request for me to attend the F-16 Division of the USAF Weapon's School. I racked my brain to think of anyone who could have sufficient pull to arrange such a thing..."

"I'm offended you think I blackmailed anyone to arrange it." said Harry with mock affront.

"Ah ha, so you are responsible." she said triumphantly, nicking more of his breakfast.

"Looks like I need to get kit organized." stated Gustav who had only been half-listening; "See you in briefing Potter."

"Jah, danke schön." Harry responded as he left.

"So?" asked Nadya with an arched eyebrow.

"Having glanced at the reports from your flying training, I thought a little while flying something with a single seat and a lot of go would be good, especially given that the EF2000 project is coming along." shrugged Harry; "And America seems to have done you good, nice tan."

"It's not as cold and damp as Wales." Nadya admitted; "What kind of pull did you have to arrange this?"

"It was just one favour. The Americans just owed me another debt to me to a tune of about two-forty million dollars for four aircraft they really wanted." Harry shrugged.

"They must have been pretty desperate." she commented.

"They were indeed." replied Harry, smirking.

Just prior to the Gulf War, he and Jock McCabe were deployed on one last mission to Russia as 'father and son'. The Soviet Union was half-collapsed with some bastions in the KGB and the old Soviet committees holding out. In the utter chaos with units turning against each-other and their comrade Russians, Harry, still a mischievous teenager, couldn't help but steal a few aircraft including five MiG-31 Foxhounds. Forward to the Yugoslavian wars, with NATO knocking on Russia's doors in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the USAF and CIA were desperate to find out the capabilities of the '31.

"You realise we're going to be fighting again?" Nadya asked; "I hope you don't mind if I don't pull any punches?"

"Not at all." Harry's smirk extended into a genuine smile; "I look forward to it."

"Good. Anyway, I thought your time with JG73 was until the end of last year?" she said.

"Yeah, so did I, it got extended indefinitely because NATO was contemplating flying our Fulcrums into the Balkans and by that time I was already the third-most experienced pilot on the wing." Harry explained; "I ramped up our training, a lot, we quietly retired a couple of our aircraft at their three-thousand hour limit and broke them for spares, covertly replacing them with other aircraft I sold the German government. Now we're flying a minimum of two hours a day and one at a night per pilot, I'm usually flying about four or five hours in twenty-four hours."

"That's a pretty big workload." Nadya commented.

"I feel sorry for the poor ground crew and for the poor aircraft that we're flying the daylights out of." replied Harry with a slight grimace; "But as I said, we covertly dispose of aircraft when they reach their time limit and I supply replacements looted from all over the world... And stop stealing my breakfast, wench!"

They both laughed before starting eating in earnest.

* * *

"Two o'clock high." Harry barked over the radio; "Move up."

The four MiG-29s lit their afterburners as they caught sight of their adversaries. Four F-15 Eagles of the USAF. They also knew that high-up, waiting like carrion to pick off the remains of the fight were a pair of aggressor squadron F-16 Fighting Falcons. It was going to be a nasty fight, and they were at a disadvantage. The Luftwaffe pilots, led by Harry, had stuck to the desert floor, never going more than twenty feet above it.

Immediately, one of the F-15s made a bad move. He turned in to make a gun-shot on Harry's wingman. Harry rolled his MiG-29 over onto the far side of his wingman and held lock with an AA-11 Archer, the computer simulator onboard 'firing' the missile, sending a message to the F-15s computer system.

"Fox-Two, Fox-Two!" Harry radioed the mission controller; "Pirate Two, break."

" _ _Pirate one, breaking.__ " radioed Gustav Brack, flying wingman as he rolled in to follow Harry in a tight spiralling climb.

The F-15s could only survive by staying out of the kill-zone which was forty-five degrees up, down, left and right from each of the seeker heads on the MiG-29's missiles. The four-ship flight of F-15s was already split up with Pirates Three and Four going after the wingman of the one Harry had shot down while he and Brack went after the other two.

Harry caught one in a close-range fight. The F-15 couldn't climb because every time the MiG was herding him towards the ground, knowing where the kill-zone for the AA-11 Archers was. Then as they entered a right-hand turn, Gustav broke out of the flight and climbed, rolling over at a higher level to bring his MiG to bear.

" _ _Guns guns guns.__ " came the radio signal.

They reformed to enter a shallow dive after the other two of Pirate Flight, but already the F-15s, unprepared for the Luftwaffe's aggressive divide and conquer attack, utilising off bore-sight missile shots, had been taken down. Then the F-16s of the Aggressor Squadron pounced on them. Chaffing and flaring, Harry and Brack hit the deck with plumes of smoke from their engines as they accelerated into a turn on the desert floor. The F-16s had two choices, go after one half of Pirate Flight or the other.

They made the wrong choice and Pirates Three and Four, under attack, went aggressive and held the fight in a stalemate for Pirates One and Two to enter the scrap. All across the sky and land, they climbed, dived, turned, rolled and fought in an uneven fight between extremely experienced pilots in very different aircraft.

The MiG pilots found safety in numbers, working again in pairs. The F-16s split so that they didn't have to be constantly covering the other. Harry flicked back and forth, rolling around the path of an Viper that was right on his wingtip, vying for that perfect position for a cannon or missile shot, while Brack was rolling around them, trying to get his own attack in.

Then the F-16 made his first and final mistake of the fight. He opened onto full burner and climbed. Harry had no trouble with an instant pitch-up to follow him, but the F-16 had put himself just ahead of him.

"Fox-Two, Fox-Two!" reported Harry; "Aggressor down."

Pirate Two was also down with a 'guns guns guns' call from the other Aggressor F-16 who had got an opportune shot on Brack. In wheeling about, Harry also brought his thirty-millimetre autocannon to bear on the remaining Viper and ended the fight with a last call of 'guns guns guns'.

* * *

Back in the briefing room, the four MiG pilots were looking fairly pleased as they walked in off the flight line, still in flying suits and anti-G suits, helmets under their arms. They'd got a six-to-one kill ratio and their exceptionally manoeuvrable fighters had shocked the aggressors and the F-15 pilots alike. Harry had heard rumours that the three USAF pilots who had flown with JG73 had either been laid off or pushed into dead-end postings, but until then, he didn't believe it.

"So, what have we learnt today?" asked the mission controller from the podium at the head of the briefing room once all the pilots who had been out on exercise filed in.

"Not to mess with Jagdgeschwader 73?" Harry asked.

"That if the flight lead is a USAF Weapons School F-16 graduate, he knows our moves off by heart." said one of the aggressor pilots, who had his arms folded across his chest and looked to be sulking.

"What we actually learnt today is that aircraft have weaknesses and the best pilots and leaders are the ones who know how to either exploit them or prevent them being exploited!" sighed the aggressor leader; "The MiG pilots suffer from a lack of quality long-range armaments, so they came in so low that the ground crew are painting over the scratches. And that they knew their aircraft's strengths, and how to exploit them."

"Correct. Flight Lieutenant Potter, how much training do you do a week?" asked the mission controller.

"Ugh... apart from Sundays when I am on QRA duty and get in anything between two and ten hours flying depending on emergencies, I usually instruct a class in the morning, which is until our fuel tanks are empty, so about an hour, then I'll switch aircraft, take another class up for an hour, then swap back for an hour of solo time, leaving the afternoon, evening and night for giving Viper drivers the biggest heart attacks of their lives." Harry answered; "I don't let a pilot onto the active duty roster unless he has fifteen hours flying time in one week. And all my crews are ex-Phantom flight leaders or East German veterans, so nobody has less than two-thousand fast jet hours, and at the moment nobody has under a thousand on our MiGs."

"There you have it from the horse's mouth itself. You were pitched up against highly-experienced crews who spend their spare time eating overconfident pilots alive and train hard, daily. These JG73 guys are put up against rigorous expectations in the mornings and relax by taking on NATO combat pilots and tearing them apart." the mission controller stated; "You all got so overconfident or so nervous at the reputation of these guys' rides that they took you down. Potter, up here please, I want you to explain your tactics."

Harry kicked his helmet under his chair and pocketed a notebook he'd been scribbling in, walking up to the podium and leaning on the desk there. He spotted Nadya, also in full flying kit, with a group of Fighting Falcon pilots around her, presumably from her squadron. She shot him a slight smile as he began.

"As you said, we're hindered heavily with a lack of long-range and medium-range armaments. In a typical Eastern Bloc situation, that job would be done by entirely different aircraft, the Foxbat and Foxhound." Harry explained; "You've got to look at the Soviet doctrine of air defence. They were expecting long-range bombers to come flooding over. The long-range heavy interceptors would take the brunt of the first wave, but the short-range point defence was left to the MiG-29 Fulcrum. If we were still part of that, our job would be to launch in numbers, slavishly following the orders of a ground controller to vector in on an attack force where we would be let loose like a pack of dogs with short-range missiles and guns."

He poured himself some water into a plastic cup and took a sip before resuming speaking.

"Our job on QRA is not much different. We sit in the Quick Reaction Alert rooms, and when the alarm goes off, we're in our aircraft within one minute and the engineers have done everything but push the start button. When we get in the air, we have no briefing document, no agenda." continued Harry; "We have no idea what we're doing. This is universal across all services. The briefing comes in the air, the controller vectors you on until you acquire radar and you close to visual range for identification."

Another sip before continuing.

"What we're doing here is actually more the job of the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker, so we need to identify our faults and cover them sufficiently that we won't suffer due to them. Hence my rigorous training and expectations from each pilot. I'm sure they hate me, but it could save their lives in the future." Harry shrugged; "Because we don't have good long or medium-range weapons, we need to close to visual range. How? We stick like glue to the landscape where most people wouldn't dare follow and their radar doesn't pick us up easily. I tested this recently with an F-4 Phantom laden with Skyflash radar-guided missiles. It couldn't lock until we were at two-fifty feet and the radar, AN/APG-76 that aircraft is fitted with couldn't pick us up if we were below forty-five feet in the German landscape and doing anything above two-hundred knots."

"So at this point you've eliminated the threat of radar-guided missiles and look-down shoot-down radar?" asked the mission controller.

"Indeed. So we needed then to close into the fight for what we call a 'knife fight in a phone box'." Harry stated; "One of us acted as a radar lure, popping up to a couple of thousand feet, staying there for as long as it took for someone to pick him up and try and get a radar lock before dropping back down to ground level. We then moved to a safe distance, visually identified and engaged our opponents. We had put together covering our own faults and exploiting the strengths of our opponents to open the ball."

"Now at this point you broke into pairs." stated the mission controller, the HUD from Harry's aircraft coming up on a projector screen behind him.

"At this point I got a shot with an Archer." Harry corrected; "The aircraft itself has a lock-on system, but that can be slaved to the seeker heads of the missiles which themselves can be slaved to the helmet sight. I used my helmet sight to pull the seeker onto the F-15 that I picked out, and called a missile shot. Now we had three F-15s, which meant they could split two-one or one-two, either way they were already in trouble. The F-15 I went after with Pirate Two made the mistake of turning and running, trying to climb away. I herded him back towards the ground and our kill-zone. He by this time was aware that we had the capability to take odd angle shots, so avoided them. He then tried a flat turn which allowed my wingman to roll out and call guns."

He replayed the video on the projector.

"Essentially that engagement was me tapping the F-15 with a stick, gently moving it around until Pirate Two could line up a good shot." Harry stated; "Now I haven't spoken to Pirate Three or Four, so I have no idea what they did, but it worked. However, at this point we got jumped by the two aggressors. They made several mistakes. Firstly, if they had joined the fight just as I was herding the F-15, they could have entered the melee and taken us out. They didn't."

"Mission parameters-" began one of the aggressors.

"Don't care. It was a mistake." Harry cut him off; "Mistake one was made even as we were eating those Eagles. Then we got a chance to reform."

"We thought it would nicely group you together for a massacre." admitted the aggressor leader.

"It didn't work because we were waiting. You just got us in sight and then we broke apart in high-G turns that would have forced you to pull horrific negative-G to follow immediately. You hesitated, you then separated. One of you took out one of us, but the guy I was faced with went stupid and happily flew himself right into the kill-zone for not just one, but all of my Archer missiles, and in doing so, doomed himself." Harry stated; "Which on JG73 would be reason for a total bawling out and a replay of the mission. In allowing himself to be taken out, it freed up two aircraft to close on his colleague who had fought Pirate Four into a stalemate at which point he lost all opportunity to survive the fight. I'm not going to hold this against you, but you need to learn that the only safe way to engage us is either at medium to long range or from behind."

After that bollocking, it was bag to the aircraft which had been refuelled and were ready for round two.

* * *

 **Early September 1998, Nellis Air Force Base**

Harry drew breath in short bursts as the hot air hit him from outside the MiG which was ticking itself into coolness on the ramp at Nellis. He was physically exhausted from a drawn out dogfight which had only ended when his aircraft had signalled fuel was getting low. The F-16 pilot, and he had a fair idea who, seemed to know his every move and was throwing them back in his face, resulting in the longest stalemate he'd ever fought.

With all of their wingmen having been shot down, it had been the most intense one-on-one fight he'd ever fought. The main staple of the enemy pilot's technique were feints to throw him off in the wrong direction, unfortunately that was also one of Harry's favourite moves. So they'd been constantly duelling without result for the time it took for the MiG's twin engines to drain its fuel tanks.

Tiredly releasing his harness, Harry pulled himself up onto the ejector seat and down onto the tarmac, peeling off his helmet and handing it to one of his groundcrew with a tired nod of thanks, he accepted a bottle of ice-cold water, electing to drink about half of it and pour the rest over his head for the cooling effect. His flying suit would dry out fine.

Half an hour later, he sank gratefully onto the bench of one of the dining tables in the mess hall and began working on demolishing the contents of the plate he'd had filled up by the servers.

"We were expecting you back about an hour ago, what happened?" asked Brack.

"I got caught in a stalemate dogfight after you lot all got taken out. A Viper driver with a point to prove held me in a stalemate for about an hour until I ran low on fuel and called it." Harry grumbled; "I must now eat a rather large helping of humble pie, I haven't lost a one-on-one gunfight in a plane since I was a teenager."

"We all have to eat some humble pie sometimes." the German laughed; "When you came along, we thought you were ninety percent impudence, five percent arrogance and five percent hot air. Then when you got up in that aircraft... we all got embarrassed. I'd hang around but I've got a combat air patrol to organise and lead."

"Have fun." Harry replied as the remaining German airmen vacated the table. He wasn't sorry that he wasn't on this mission, he was bloody exhausted.

He glanced at the door as his colleagues paused to let someone through. Dressed in the dull grey and beige camouflage clothes that the USAF were using that month, looking pretty tired and with her hair tied in a tight knot, Nadya slipped in, her eyes immediately fixing on him.

Harry gestured towards the food being served at the counters, indicating that she should get some for herself. After piling her plate high with the day's spaghetti carbonara, Nadya walked over and dropped into the seat opposite him.

"Did I impress?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Very much so." Harry replied.

"Good." Nadya laughed, tension leaving her body; "I was genuinely worried that I'd turn out to be a terrible pilot and waste all the time, energy and money you've poured into teaching me."

"Take it from me, I wouldn't have taught you if I'd thought you weren't going to turn out as a good pilot." said Harry, poking his fork in her direction; "You know when we arrived it was about five years, give or take a few days from when we first met at the International Air Tattoo at Fairford?"

"I half-remembered." she said after a mouthful of food; "It crossed my mind once, why?"

"Just thinking." Harry shrugged before admitting; "I guess I'm a bit proud of the young woman who's grown from the teenager I met then."

"Please, you're making me blush." Nadya replied; "Coming to think of it, I don't think I was this sarcastic before I met you. On a serious note, do you know anything about my next posting?"

"No... All I know is that the USAF has you until the the middle of next year." answered Harry; "I haven't had much time because I've been getting JG73 on something resembling a war footing. I was going to have a look when I was next in Britain and ask you now that you're nearing graduation from the Weapons School what you wanted to do next."

 _"I believe you." she stated; "It's just I got a piece of US Department of Defence USAF paper telling me that I'm on a short-term posting to a combat unit in Italy. I officially shake hands and get my badge and plaque tonight, its meant to be a surprise but I guess I learnt too well from you, then I've got four days leave and a transport to Italy."_

"Bloody hell." Harry breathed; "That's a bit fast."

"What?" Nadya asked.

"I didn't think American bureaucracy could manage to arrange a transport and a crew in the same place at the same time in the same universe without spending ten years of committee meetings." Harry said with a straight face.

"They did this time." replied Nadya, shaking her head and trying to keep a smirk off her face.

"Are you okay with being shipped out to a combat unit?" Harry asked, remembering when he first was shipped out to Iraq.

"Yeah, I think. I'm not nervous, but I've been flying 'combat' missions in combat jets for five months, I'm a flight leader, I know, that I can hit a target, air sea or land." Nadya responded, fingers of the hand not occupied with eating tapping nervously; "You don't believe that last part do you."

"Clinically you know that you can. But your mind won't accept it until you're looking down your sight at the target with a finger on the trigger." Harry replied; "My first combat wasn't in an aircraft but I experienced something similar. I knew I would fight and kill, and survive, but my mind kept on coming up with circumstances that I'd fail."

"Something like that." Nadya laughed nervously.

"You've got the days of leave, you're in Las Vegas, sin city itself, go out, relax." Harry gestured in the general direction of the city; "God alone knows you deserve it."

"Hey, I'm not into that kind of thing!" exclaimed Nadya.

"See, already you're cheering up." Harry grinned; "Besides, if you're not into debauchery and gambling, I've got a pretty nice brownstone on the edge of the city if you need somewhere to simply hole up for some peace and quiet."

"It would be appreciated." Nadya accepted after a few moments thought; "When are you flying back, because I know today was the last day of full exercises."

"About a month's time, the Americans have requested the British and German governments lend four pilots services to them for MiG-29 training." Harry replied; "They've got hold of a few of their own aircraft without me selling them."

"I was wondering if you'd provide me with some company while I'm on leave." Nadya asked hesitantly.

"I'd be a pretty crap friend if I said no." Harry replied with a penetrating look; "Never hesitate to ask me for something."

* * *

Stood on the sun-baked tarmac as Nadya hoisted her kit, contained into one suitcase, onto the cargo loader for the C-9 McDonnell Douglas DC-9 airliner heading out to Italy, Harry smiled wistfully. It was strange, from his perspective, watching someone as close as Nadya going off to war, when it was a path he'd participated in so much.

"Hey, why the long face?" she asked quietly, having walked over and wrapped her arms around him.

"Just you, going off on your first operational tour." he replied simply, laying his own arms around her shoulders, accepting the embrace; "Just do as well as you've done in exercises, keep learning and you'll be safe."

"I will." Nadya promised, leaning her head on his shoulder, with no sign of moving.

"You'll have to let go of me eventually." said Harry.

"Ugh, but I'm comfortable here." she groaned

"Nadya... not that I don't mind this but..." Harry began.

"You're worried that it'll make things awkward between us?" Nadya grumbled, proving that even with her mind constantly occupied by the fight ahead, she could read him like a book. Waiting for a moment as he nodded slightly, she sighed; "Oh for heaven's sake."

A moment later Harry felt one of her hands in his hair and her lips against his. After a second frozen, he pulled her against him and began responding, deepening the kiss, tongues dancing against each other.

"Are you sure..." he began again as they broke apart before being silenced by a finger on his lips.

"I'm old enough to take reasonable risks." Nadya replied, holding a steady gaze between her grey eyes and his green; "Just... please be here... or wherever I am when I get back."

"I promise." Harry replied quietly, kissing her once more.

* * *

 **March 1999, the Former Yugoslavian**

Sat at the controls of her General Dynamics F-16, Flying Officer Nadya 'Storm' Falke kept half an eye on her navigation and half an eye on the strike package she was leading. Six F-15E Strike Eagles bearing a mix of Durandal runway-denial bombs, GBU-28 laser-guided bunker-busting bombs, GBU-24 Paveway III general purpose two-thousand pound bombs along with some self-defence air-to-air weapons. Six F/A-18 Hornets equipped for Wild Weasel with AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation missiles for killing radar systems, Zuni unguided rockets and AGM-65 Maverick laser-guided air-to-ground missiles completed the strike package.

She was escort leader, Storm One, with five further F-16 Fighting Falcons following her and two United States Navy Grumman F-14 Tomcat fighters handling the long-range aspect of the escort. Peeling away from the tanker over Bosnia, they began the cruise the few miles to the Serbian border with Bosnia Herzegovina and suddenly the ice-cold fighter pilot's mindset snapped into place.

"Combat formation. Viking, take your jets five-thousand high." Nadya rapped out orders.

" _ _Roger Storm, climbing five-thousand.__ " drawled Viking One, the Tomcat flight lead.

"Storm flight, spread out and start pushing up." she ordered.

Leaving the comfortable cruise, the F-16s, F-14s, F/A-18s and F-15s pushed their throttles to full dry thrust and began to push through the sound barrier. The target was an airfield that was causing too much trouble for the NATO force, scrambling MiGs against the bombing force. Nadya's job was to escort the bombers to disable the airfield, but orders directly from the CinC of Allied Forces Southern Europe was to get as many enemy aircraft in the air and then destroy them.

"Weapons check." barked Nadya, cycling through weapons on her fire control computer. M61 Vulcan, AMRAAM fire-and-forget radar-guided missiles, AIM-9M heat-seeking missiles. One by one, the nineteen other aircraft checked in with their leader.

"Storm Five, Storm Six, break and climb." barked Nadya as they approached their target; "Two, Three, Four, push up."

They lit their afterburners, going onto full power and racing ahead to lure up the fighters so that the path would be clear for the strike package to power through. Within a minute at about Mach one-point-five, she already had a dozen radar reports.

"Three, Four, break and kill." was her last order; "Two, with me."

The F-16s separated as the radar contacts hit thirty miles ahead. Straight-off, she took out one radar contact with an AMRAAM missile before she'd even got a visual, a bright flash lighting up the sky as the closing time went under one minute, the closing speed about two-thousand miles-per-hour with both sides going supersonic.

The merge was sudden. Nadya, doing one thing she'd always been told fighter pilots shouldn't waste time with, fired a snap-shot at a MiG-21. Ignoring the lead indicator, she simply concentrated on the centre of her HUD and the line of flight. The aircraft, a needle-thin delta was about to race above her on her left when she eased the nose up a couple of degrees and fired. Her Vulcan sawed the aircraft in half with a burst of twenty-millimetre shells, the F-16 being tossed in the air with the explosion. That would teach the instructors that snap shooting just was a case of sufficient skill.

Regaining control of the fighter, she took up number two position to Storm Two as he was pounced on by two MiG-29s, his nose tracking after a third. Their AA-8 missiles went wide, blasting one of the flares he was churning out. Nadya, knowing that she couldn't risk an AIM-9 shot and sending a missile after her wingman's tailpipe, went for another gun kill.

"Two, right!" she barked.

Storm Two pulled hard on his stick, turning hard to starboard, contrails on his wing-tips. Nadya climbed left, half-looping over so she was upside-down, chasing the Fulcrum's tail.

"Sorry Marshall Tito." Nadya said sarcastically, pressing hard on the gun button and rolling the aircraft over.

Her rotary cannon hit the starboard wing first and ran across the fuselage, the aircraft shuddering. There was no noticeable damage and then suddenly, sheets of flame left both engines and the wings folded up. The MiG plummeted into the woodland below. Storm Two feinted into a climb, rolling over and diving away as the remaining MiG behind him climbed. Then suddenly it exploded as a AIM-54 Phoenix from a Tomcat dozens of miles away wiped it out.

"Viking, I owe you." radioed Storm Two.

" _ _Call it a beer in the mess tonight.__ " was the concise reply; " _ _Talk less, kill more.__ "

"Fighters are clear." Nadya radioed; "I'm seeing Orao's evacuating at treetop level. Viking can you handle the escort so we can go and shoot at some barrels full of fish?"

" _ _Roger. Damn, I love that sense of humour, are you sure you're taken?__ " radioed Viking; " _ _I have to write that Tito one down.__ "

"Talk less, kill more." she barked, bringing Storm Three and Four back into formation as they hit treetop level in pursuit of a gaggle of small strike aircraft; "Taking lead."

Nadya pushed well ahead of the remainder of Storm Flight for a lean AIM-9M shot at one of the Oraos. The missile hissed, parting from the pylon and racing after the aircraft she'd singled out, the Yugoslavian leader. The Sidewinder flew wonderfully, straight up the tailpipe of her target where it exploded. The entire aircraft bulged outwards with the resulting explosion, then collapsed into wings, tail and forward section and tumbled into the landscape.

Falling back, Storm Two lined up a shot. One by one, they mercilessly took down the helpless strike aircraft. Nadya was lining up a second attack when suddenly, two of them turned right into her attack and came with twin-barrelled cannon blazing. She rolled out of the way of the attack and chewed one up with a snap-shot with her cannon.

Climbing hard, she half-rolled and dived back onto the tail of the other. It began jinking back and forth, and at real risk of her far faster F-16 being outmanoeuvred, she pulled back and above, then pointed the nose down, getting good tone in her helmet headset for another Sidewinder. This missile simply detonated about a foot from the aircraft, sending a deadly burst of shrapnel and a shockwave into the Orao. A mist of jet fuel left the doomed jet and then, without warning it was engulfed fireball and then blew up.

" _ _Storm One, I do believe that was five kills in one fight.__ " radioed Storm Two.

"It felt like swatting at large, slow-moving flies with a shovel." Nadya replied; "Return to formation and join the escort."

They rolled back into formation and raced back to the target. The F/A-18 Hornets had gone in first, blowing the anti-air and armour into oblivion, clearing the way for the F-15 Strike Eagles to wipe out the bunkers, hardened hangars and turn the runway into something out of a cheap Hollywood apocalypse movie. The Tomcats and the aircraft freed of ordnance were occasionally descending to shoot something up, but the base was out of action.

Nadya watched as one of the Hornets poured a barrage of rockets into the control tower, framed against the raging inferno that was once the fuel dump. Shattered aircraft were strewn around and the hangars were like the crumbling skeletal remains of the ribcage of some monster of old myth and legend, with the concrete blasted out of the metal framework.

"Cease hostilities and return to base." she ordered after pouring a few squirts of shells into some parked vehicles; "Threat eliminated."

" _ _Storm One, this is Landlubber, requesting a precisioun strike, coordinates as follows...__ " a radio message interrupted her.

* * *

Harry cocked his head to one side as the distant pounding bombs and the bangs of aircraft going supersonic greeted his ears. He smiled thinly, adjusting his Accuracy International Arctic Warfare Super Magnum .338 Lapua Magnum rifle in his shoulder. Sat on a hill above a military base, he was simply waiting.

Then the main door, bright blue, in a corrugated metal building swung open to reveal a man dressed in old Russian combat fatigues with a kepi on his head. A fanatical butcher in the Yugoslavian resistance who had no hesitation in ordering an entire village razed to the ground and its inhabitants massacred.

He tensed behind his rifle. Range, one mile. Wind, minimal from the left. Slight adjustment. Harry squeezed the trigger. The rifle barked, sending a bullet at about two and three-quarter times the speed of sound. Blood burst from the left-hand side of the torso of his target, who sank backwards into the building. Immediately, sirens began wailing in the compound and soldiers running in every direction.

"I hope to God you're on that radio Bill." Harry muttered, grabbing his kit and preparing to melt into the countryside, before looking into the sky; "And if you're up there big man, keep an eye on Nadya."


	18. Chapter 18

**June 1999, Serbia Montenegro, the Former Yugoslavian**

Nadya quickly checked the formation of her final strike. Four Aeritalia F-104 Starfighters laden with AIM-7 Sparrow medium-range radar-guided missiles and AIM-9 Sidewinders provided the fighter escort as this time the F-14 Super Tomcats and her own flight of F-16s were laden with bombs.

At the centre of their formation was the most vulnerable and valuable part of the operation, a US Navy E-2 Hawkeye Airborne Early Warning And Control turboprop. The jets were going as slowly as they could safely and the Hawkeye was going flat out, making them all vulnerable. However, the early strikes against airfields had crippled the Yugoslavian Air Force so they were hopeful there would be no interceptions.

" _Storm one, Archer, I have armour twenty miles and bearing zero-niner-zero magnetic._ " radioed the Hawkeye.

"Archer, I copy." Nadya replied; "Viking, Storm, make bearing zero-niner-zero, supersonic. Romeo One and Two, follow and escort. Three and Four, stay with the AEWACs."

She knew that the moment the Hawkeye had radioed her, that the crews in the F-16s and the F-14s had tensed, shifting the aircraft slightly, moving their wings about to try and get a visual. Clinically, they knew they wouldn't be able to see a target on the ground at that range, but it didn't stop them trying.

Banking over, she led the Tomcats and Vipers down, opening up into afterburner for the sprint to the target. The Starfighters stayed high where they would be the most use. Nadya flicked off the master arm safety as her radar lit up with ground reports.

"One strike and back up to the escort." she ordered.

" _Roger._ " chorused the other pilots.

They crashed through the speed of sound on their descent to the target. Selecting the unguided two-thousand pound bombs she was carrying four of, Nadya lined up the road which was opening up before her. Then, proceeding neatly in a wonderful column down the road was the armour they were looking for.

"Visual." Nadya barked.

She entered a swooping dive, dropping her first bomb with the lead indicator on the back of the column. Then, bringing the stick back incrementally between presses of the button, she dropped the three remaining bombs. Pulling onto the normal plane of flight, she found a hill right in front of her. The F-16 roared around it, removing any chance of anti-air weapons in the armoured column getting a lock onto her.

Nadya froze at the controls for a second. The far hill, about a mile ahead was bristling with anti-air weapons. She'd not seen them in the so-called 'Petting Zoo' at Nellis, but had seen photographs of them. ZSU-57-2 light tanks with twin fifty-seven millimetre autocannon. They immediately began blazing away at the F-16.

Suddenly, the moment of mental freeze was gone. The cold, clinical mindset snapped back down. Climbing hard, vertically, she snapped the aircraft inverted and dived, half-rolling out of the dive with a ZSU in her HUD. M61 selected. She fired a long, two-second burst. The turret of the ZSU was open at the top, so her shells streamed into it. Nadya pulled up, avoiding the hillside.

"Viking, this is Storm One, I have anti-air five miles zero-niner-zero from the target. Type is five-seven dash two, confirm." she radioed.

" _Viking, roger Storm One, proceeding to secondary target._ " the F-14 lead replied.

She breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't want to end her last mission with an F-16 full of holes, or a hole full of F-16.

* * *

 **June 1999, Aviano Air Base, Italy**

Looking out of the window of her room overlooking the airfield, Nadya was hit by a wave of bittersweet feeling. The F-16s of the Thirty-First Fighter Wing roared off the runway, turning towards the Balkans. And she wasn't with them. Day and night, she'd flown combat air support missions over the Former Yugoslavia, often staying up from dawn until dusk, with her only contact being with a refuelling tanker.

When she was off strike missions, it was combat air patrols in defence of the airspace of Europe. She'd been flying her Viper day and night for three-hundred and thirty days. From green rookie to experienced, even slightly jaded, fighter pilot in less than a year. At least she could proudly wear the three-thousand hour F-16 patch, having flown nearly a thousand during USAF Weapons School, Red and Green Flag training, and then over two thousand more on operations.

"Falke, the CO wants to see you." called the gruff USAF Staff Sergeant in charge of the accommodation block.

Nadya snapped her head around, glaring at the door before sighing. Not having even changed out of her flying suit and anti-G suit, she looked like she was just about to go out on a mission. But she wasn't. It was over.

"Thanks Sam." she replied, being the only person allowed to call Staff Sergeant Sam Johnson by his first name.

Contemplating getting out of her flying gear, she decided against it. She just couldn't be bothered, beside, having pretty much lived in it for so long, it felt natural. Walking out, she fell into step next to the Staff Sergeant.

"Not able to understand why you're not in the cockpit?" he asked, getting a piercing look; "I've seen fighter pilots told they're off operations before."

"I understand the cold logic. I've flown a lot of hours, shot a lot of bullets." Nadya replied; "It's just I feel like I should be back up there. I've flown an average of three missions a day for nearly a year, I don't think I've ever watched an F-16 take off from here without either climbing into or out of the cockpit of my own."

"You're a fighter pilot Falke, a damn good one." Johnson stated; "One that the Thirty-First is proud to have had serving here. But while you've passed every medical, the shrinks are worried that the rate of operations are going to burn you out. When did you last take leave?"

"Early September last year." she admitted as they arrived at a Humvee to take her to the operations management centre.

"You've done ten months of combat flying without rest, and I've worked with you and fighter pilots long enough that I know when they need a break." he replied, climbing into the Humvee; "You've somehow managed to get your name in the board for every single operation we've flown and still done combat air patrols."

"I had a good teacher." Nadya smirked.

That evening in the mess hall, the members of her squadron were assembled in the seats facing the stage at one end of it, most, like her, still in their flying suits, though she had taken off her anti-G suit. Nadya walked onto the stage with the Wing's Commanding Officer, raising an eyebrow as she saw several unexpected faces.

Wearing his flying suit, still with JG73 insignia on it and a Squadron Leader's rank slides, Harry was sat next to her father, who for the second time she'd ever seen, was wearing the uniform of the 'Black Rats', the Fourth Armoured Brigade. Harry, spotting her gaze, shot her a near-imperceptible wink. Any further communication was halted as the CO began to speak.

"In keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force, Flying Officer Falke has served for almost a year on constant operations. Tirelessly, she has flown over seven hundred combat missions and many more patrols of European airspace, accounting for dozens of armoured targets, destroyed infrastructure and has played a significant part in the halt of the atrocities committed just across our borders." the Commanding Officer began; "And at her own requested, Flying Officer Falke's five air-to-air kills have not been published, but amongst us we have the first known western flying ace since the Vietnam War. As such, the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Johns has authorised me in the name of Queen Elizabeth, to issue the promotion of Flight Lieutenant Falke."

Roaring applause broke out as the single band stripes on her epaulettes were replaced by the twin stripes of a Flight Lieutenant.

"And as the Commading Officer of this wing." he added, tearing the velcro patch with the F-16 two-thousand hour patch on it off her flying suit; "It is my pleasure to give you the three-thousand hour award. Over the last three-hundred and thirty days, Flight Lieutenant Falke has flown an average of nearly seven hours in every twenty four, something that must be near a record."

Nadya couldn't resist a wide smile as the three-thousand hour patch was slapped onto the velcro on her arm. She glanced towards the back of the hall as the mess bar was being stacked with glasses of various drinks and bowls of snacks. It looked like there was going to be a pretty good party.

A few hours later, she slipped out of the mess, having not seen the one person she really wanted to speak to. She zeroed in on someone sat at a park bench outside, well in the shadows.

"I was wondering if you'd be able to escape." he commented.

"They're an enthusiastic lot, Harry." she replied as he stood up and walked over.

"Well, you're a fighter pilot now." Harry said, pulling her into a hug.

"I even have a collection of sarcastic comments to go with the wings." Nadya grinned. They'd played a few of her better ones on the projector, including the one about Marshal Tito.

"I could barely keep a straight face." Harry laughed as her arms encircled his waist.

Nadya didn't hesitate, she pulled him into a kiss, one hand remaining on his back and the other ending up in his hair. Harry relaxed into the kiss, luxuriating in the warmth and affection they shared.

"Is it over?" she asked, eventually breaking apart.

"For me?" Harry replied; "One more domestic operation and I'm off-duty."

All it involved was getting to Gringotts Bank undetected, arrange in exchange for a favour, the location of the hideout of one Ludovic Bagman and cash the favour in to have the briefcase of rough diamonds he owned cut.

"I've got to head back to Britain, something about a debriefing and then I've got some leave time due." Nadya stated; "I was thinking about spending some time with Pa and meeting up with you if you're not breaking someone else's nation."

"Sure." said Harry, smiling slightly as Nadya contentedly laid her head on his shoulder.

* * *

 **Early July 1999, Thames House, London**

Nadya was just leaving a rather interesting briefing given by two rather interesting people. One was male, wore an eyepatch, hada carbon-fibre prosthetic leg in place of his left leg and was heavily scarred. The other was female, a few years older than her and apparently fresh out of Oxford. Magic. If she'd not been presented proof of it when the male, one Alastor Moody, turned the desk into a wild boar, she'd never have believed it.

There was certainly going to be an interesting conversation with Harry, but for the moment, she was signed on as a member of the exclusive and secret Section Five. Apparently they needed a pilot of sufficient skill for some of their more exotic and dangerous aircraft. She wondered if that had been Harry's agenda when he started teaching to fly fast jets. Nadya's thoughts were halted suddenly as her phone rang.

"Falke." she stated.

" _Nadya, Harry here._ " Harry replied with a mischevious tone which had her already wondering what he was plotting; " _I've got an offer for you._ "

"I'm really sorry Harry, but I'm not ready for marriage yet." Nadya cut him off; "Don't worry, you'll be the first to know when I am."

" _Wench._ " he commented; " _No, my offer involves a few months off with exclusive use of a villa near the equator, a pool and a couple of fast jets. All paid for by someone other than us._ "

"You can be the most irritatingly cryptic person in the world." she shook her head.

" _Okay, I'll get to the point. I'm in a meeting with Prime Minister Call Me Tony at the moment. He's just received a request for some assistance from the Bolivian government. Bolivia borders the biggest producers of cocaine and marijuana, as well as producing it themselves._ " Harry replied; " _The problem is that drug runners are driving and flying the stuff in and out of Bolivia and have recently killed a number of drug prevention officers. The Bolivians have some old Shooting Stars, Canadian-built, and that's about it. The PM asks if we could head out there with a couple of aeroplanes and dissuade the drug runners._ "

"I heard something about a villa and a swimming pool." said Nadya.

" _Yeah, the Bolivian Government have already authorised the use of it for the length of our stay and some houses next to an airport for a couple of engineers to look after the aircraft._ " responded Harry.

"Why doesn't the PM just send the RAF to go and shoot at the drug runners?" she asked.

" _Deployments to the Balkans, a continued air policing mission over north and south Iraq, training, politics._ " said Harry; " _Maybe it's better in the political arena that RAF aircraft aren't operating that close to Argentina and we can just be mercenaries in the pay of the Bolivians._ "

"We need suitable aircraft. If it's just the two of us flying, then a pair of aircraft, fast single-seaters or something like that with good radar systems for interception." Nadya stated; "We need guns, possibly missiles, rockets and bombs. The only way to stop the drug influx would be to intercept any aircraft coming in with drugs and shoot up the drug runners on the road. And if the drug running aircraft don't go into an airport of our choice, we shoot them down."

" _I've already given it some thought. While I was in the Balkans, I had a load of aircraft shipped to Israel for major avionics and combat capability upgrades. I've got a Thunderchief fighter-bomber in readiness that I had flown back to England a few weeks ago._ " Harry stated.

Nadya paused for a moment, raking her mind to remember what the Thunderchief was. It took a moment before she recalled something she'd come across while reading up on Harry's Super Sabre. A twelve-ton single-engine Vietnam-era fighter of quite impressive size and payload, with a pretty big engine.

"Combat capability upgrades?" she asked.

" _A load of wiring and the nuclear weapons delivery avionics stripped out to reduce weight. New avionics from the Israeli Terminator 'Kurnass' Phantoms._ " Harry listed, before taking a dramatic pause; " _And you'll like this, the old engines have been swapped out for Concorde-type Rolls-Royce Olympus engines. So you've got an aircraft that could already do nine-hundred on the deck but with better fuel consumption and more dry thrust than the old had in afterburner._ "

"Harry. Two questions. Where's this aeroplane and where are the keys?" Nadya asked.

" _Shall I assume you're on board for this holiday._ "

"You bet."

* * *

Harry pulled himself up by the forward edge of the windscreen of his Phantom as a set of headlights searched him out on the ramp at RAF Boscombe Down. Shinning down the boarding ladder as the big jet ticked into coolness, he watched as Nadya climbed out of her BMW, eyes running over the Vietnam-camouflaged aircraft.

"I swear that I will shoot myself before voluntarily getting involved in politics." he stated, walking over.

"That's a bit extreme, maybe shoot someone else." Nadya laughed, linking hands with him.

"Come on, it's time to have a look in the toy cupboard." Harry said, smirking.

"Is this Q branch or something?" she asked.

"Did you get the briefing?" Harry asked.

"Mhmm. A very interesting one indeed." Nadya replied.

"I'll admit I was worried how you'd react." said Harry.

"Curiosity mainly." she shrugged; "A little annoyance you didn't tell me, but I can understand why."

"Thanks." Harry breathed, relaxing and squeezing her hand gently; "But no. Not Q Branch. Beyond the Heavy Aircraft Test Squadron Hangar is the headquarters of Department M Section Seven."

The slightly-ritualistic, formal intonation of the Fidelius-charmed location revealed it to Nadya. The already-immense hangar revealed a low building of concrete, blast-proof reinforced concrete with huge doors at the front, the entire thing covered in grass to camouflage it. They approached a small door set into a tunnel emerging from the side of the hangar, one she had not noticed before. Harry opened it, revealing a small, empty space with a second, blast-proof door at the other end, with a keypad, a fingerprint scanner and a retina scanner.

"I'll see that you get added to the system." Harry stated, keying in a nine-digit code, scanning his fingerprint and right eye; "This hangar was built for nuclear ordnance during the cold war, and it suits our purposes."

They emerged into a completely empty space, well lit with a concrete floor.

"There's nothing here." said Nadya.

"Well done." Harry smirked, tapping a button on the edge of the door-frame from the tunnel, ignoring the two loud whoops of a siren from somewhere around them; "Steady."

Nadya stumbled as the floor suddenly lurched from under them and rapidly descended what she would guess to be fifty feet. As her stomach caught up with her body, she realised that firstly, Harry was holding her steady with an arm around her waist, and that all around them was a massive underground space.

"Section Seven. The toy cupboard." announced Harry as Nadya looked around, wide-eyed; "Tactical strike section should be interesting.

The first stop on their trip was a pair of strange-looking slightly Concorde-like aircraft, tailless deltas.

"Avro Vulcans." she stated as Harry pulled down the crew entrance hatch on the nearest Vulcan's nose.

"Yup, these are the lowest hour airframes we could find, and even then we did a big refurbishment. Section Seven, 'Mojo Squadron' use these as testbeds for some of Section Three, the magical developments unit's ideas. They're also fitted out for attack roles if it becomes necessary to take action against the magical world." Harry explained, hoisting himself up the ladder in front of the nose undercarriage; "They're fitted out for modified High Speed Anti-Radiation missiles as well as conventional ordnance. The HARM missile targeting system allows the Weapons Systems Officer to target objects emitting magical energy."

"Have you ever had cause to use them?" Nadya asked, slipping into the tiny cockpit next to him.

"Once, ninety-three, an attack by broom-riding terrorists on an ally of ours, Jock and I were already in the air doing some tests with a bombbay mounted launch rig for the missiles, so we moseyed over there and chucked a couple of HARMs at the terrorists." Harry smirked; "And having got rid of the old HS2 bombing radar and replaced it with a more compact and effective system, we also decided to get something a little old-fashioned to make up for it."

"What?" sighed Nadya, realising he wasn't going to tell without being asked.

"A thirty-two pounder quick-firing ninety-six millimetre auto-loading cannon." Harry stated.

"While this is a beautiful and, I'm sure, effective aeroplane, I think we need something rather more compact and faster." Nadya said, half-hoping he'd come up with a reason to bring the aircraft.

"Yeah, still, I'm quite fond of these Vulcans, we got these modified to take HARM missiles before we got the Israelis to upgrade our Phantoms to their Terminator specification. These were one of two aircraft we had capable of taking out a magical target simply by homing in on the mojo coming from the target." Harry commented, patting the controls before climbing out of the seat and heading down towards the ladder.

Nadya took the initiative this time, climbing up the ladder and sliding into the cockpit of one of the next pair of aircraft.

"Saab Viggen. Outfitted for... naval strike?" Nadya asked, glancing over the cockpit systems.

"Again, magical world, a lot of the wealthier insurgents rely on export-import businesses, if we chose to take these aircraft to war, we could cut off their economic supply. Also we've got a pair of Tornado GR.1s for Sea Eagle anti-shipping strikes." Harry nodded; "We're looking at retiring the Viggen and the Tornado and replacing them with Super Hornets with Harpoon missiles in the maritime mission and replacing the Vulcans in the anti-radiation anti-magic mission."

"I suppose that makes sense." Nadya admitted, climbing out of the Viggen; "What about the Kurnass Terminator Phantoms, because if I remember correctly they have a similar payload but the requirement for the extra crewman not needed by the Super Hornet."

"At the moment we have no plans to retire them because some of the ordnance they can carry is our staple but not carried by many other things. Walleye television-guided bombs." Harry shrugged as they walked past the row of half-a-dozen Phantoms; "I also have several variants here. The G model provided HARM compatibility alongside the Vulcan until we got them done up by Israel Aerospace Industries. The RF model is our reconnaissance, sometimes we need a picture of a location and satellites can't get the detail, we take the Phantom. And of course engine test beds, we've flown Spey Phantoms with F-15 engines, and the original American Phantoms with the Mirage 2000 engines and the Eurofighter engine."

"They Spey Phantoms had good fuel consumption but the airframe had some drag issues... but overcoming that with the power with the F-15 engines would be interesting." Nadya commented; "The EJ200 powered one probably would be a good cross between not having that drag, having the power and the fuel economy, but the Mirage engine has more power than the EJ200 and availability of spares."

"Indeed, that's why we have the various versions." Harry nodded; "Now onto the area I call Red Square. You can basically split these aircraft four ways. Stolen, stolen during war, covertly bought or bought off the Chinese."

"I thought we didn't talk to the Chinese?" Nadya asked.

"Rubbish. Political Rubbish. Given that I've been on first name terms with the the last two heads of Chinese State Security I'd know." Harry replied; "It was the Soviets we weren't talking to. In '61 there was a collapse in relations between China and Russia which never really repaired properly. China invaded Vietnam with little effect in '79 and armed the Afghans against the Soviets. I visited China while I was in school and have done good business with them."

"Sorry, just having my world perceptions given a good kicking." commented Nadya.

"If you want to hate the Chinese, there's always the Taiwanese 'Chinese Nationalists'." Harry scowled; "The Kuomintang are an annoying lot who don't seem to realise that the Chinese Civil War is over and that they can't have mainland China back. I won't say I love the Chinese but the current lot with Zemin in the big chair are catching up with the modern world, we've peacefully handed over control of Hong Kong and trade with China is getting better."

"And they're comfortable enough selling you military hardware?" Nadya asked.

"Sure, it goes both ways, I occasionally help an arms shipment go somewhere, or if they find some old rifles tucked away somewhere that they would otherwise scrap, they'll give me a much reduced price on them, in exchange the British Government keeps civilian trade up and keep a weather eye on the nationalists." Harry shrugged; "We occasionally upgrade some of their military hardware, for instance, this. MiG-21 built by Chengdu, this is the Airguard model, compatible with Western missile systems, and the avionics are British and American."

Nadya climbed up to peer into the cockpit, dropping back down as Harry kept moving.

"Actually, one of the worst countries can be America, they like to find a tiger and give it a good poke with a pointy stick to see what can happen." Harry added; "I mean there are enough Americans I've worked with who I would trust with my life, but not their politicians, or even our own. Besides, the Chinese, while officially an ally of North Korea, are something of a stabilising influence as well as a route for people to escape North Korea."

"Sometimes I'm scared by how little and how few I seem to know." Nadya stated.

"You learn over time." Harry said reassuringly; "Anyway, I think I may be the only person ever to present a foreign intelligence official with a pet cat named 'Chairman Miao'."

"Only you Harry." she shook his head.

"No, I do use this knowledge for more useful purposed than annoying people." Harry chuckled; "For instance, back in '88 the Chinese retired their Delfin trainer jets, I bought quite a few and made a nice profit selling them onto American warbird enthusiasts and sold the Chinese some Boeing 737 airliners. I've bought and sold Chinese MiG-17s, mostly to military and civilian buyers in America. They also keep an eye on their equipment stores for any interesting objects I might buy. Western currency is worth a lot over there."

"I see your point." Nadya admitted; "But with the bulk they have, what point do you say 'I have enough' and stop buying?"

"Usually I keep them moving through my ownership fairly smoothly." shrugged Harry; "I admit there are one or two machines that I bought simply because I wanted to, like a pair of copied Boeing Superfortresses. But on the subject of your assumption about China, just a little thought for you to ponder on. In modern politics, rarely are there a good and a bad but varying levels of both."

Nadya nodded, once again looking into an aircraft's cockpit, this time one of two Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot ground attack jets.

"I have several more of those but they're on long-term loan to the Georgians, who in exchange, are going to have them refitted with some nice new equipment." Harry stated; "Mostly they're for evaluation and false flag operations and for use by anyone with enough money and my approval. Same for these MiG-23s, they've actually been back to Mikoyan for an upgrade."

As he walked past the line of MiG-29 Fulcrums, Harry gave one of them an affectionate pat on the nose, Nadya noting the Luftwaffe markings on the side.

"This one was the one I flew the most, and I had it quietly swapped for another airframe so I could keep it." Harry said, seeing her look; "Sue me, I'm sentimental. The rest of these Eastern European and Iraqi aircraft I don't have an emotional attachment, but when this is the aircraft that you pick off the flying roster any time you know there's going to be a scrap, you invest emotionally quite a lot in that plane."

"I admit I was rather sad to say goodbye to my Viper." Nadya admitted; "And if I didn't know better, I'd swear that a couple of these aircraft were still in Soviet markings."

"Uh, yeah, four of these '29s are either advanced 'M' variants or carrier-borne pre-production aircraft that I stole during the August Putsch in Russia. They didn't need them anyway because the program got suspended." Harry shrugged; "And they also didn't need the Foxhound that's parked under the tarpaulin in the corner, or the other ones that I sold to the Americans. Oh, if you ever want to take a trip to space, just tell me because the two-seat Foxbat is in airworthy condition."

"Harry, back on track. Bolivia. Jets to take there." Nadya commented, tearing herself away from the collection of exotic machinery.

"Aha, Thunderchiefs and Phantoms." Harry stated.

"And we've just finished an upgrade for you Harrykins." said a man, popping out of the cockpit of the Thunderchief, shockingly red hair clashing with purple dragon hide.

"Just a bit of useful modification." said a second, identical redhead.

"Nadya, meet Fred and George, they're the custodians of these aircraft and chief engineers of Section Seven, as well as Section One intelligence gatherers." Harry grinned as the twins bounced over; "They may look like they are mad, but they are in fact-"

"Totally bonkers." interrupted one of the twins; "Harrykins here recruited us straight out of school. Officially we run a magical joke shop, but we spend more time here, as well as forwarding intelligence to Section Three, which is intelligence analysis."

"All these sections are confusing." Nadya shook her head.

"It's fairly simple, under the banner of Department M, you've got One, which is intelligence gathering, Three which is the analysis of that intelligence, Five which is the SAS operational side of Department M. Then you've got Seven which is the engineering section." Harry explained; "But it's basically so that if our paperwork gets looked at, that it's as ambiguous as it can be."

"I see." she replied.

"Right Harrikins, you want to get a couple of jets on the lift?" asked the other twin; "The Thunderchief's been fitted with a bigger fuel tank in the bomb bay which can be removed, and with the removal of the wiring and computers for 'special' stores like nuclear weapons, we've fitted a second Vulcan on the right-hand side of the nose."

"If you can move an upgraded Phantom and a Thunderchief onto the lift." Harry said, grinning; "Now I need to give Nadya a few flying lessons."

* * *

"You full up?" Harry radioed, twitching the wings of his F-4E 'Kurnass' Terminator Phantom to rid himself of the drogue from the refuelling tanker, throttling up the twin SNECMA M53 engines to get a bit of altitude.

"Fifteen seconds." Nadya replied, the behemoth Thunderchief's fuel tanks, the internal ones, one carried in the bomb bay and two under the wings filling quickly from the pressurised fuel feed.

She held on for fifteen seconds before gently breaking away from the tanker and climbing up to join Harry.

"Fuel full, thank-you Bruiser." she radioed as they pulled away from the tanker.

Harry switched on his fire control radar, quickly selecting simulator mode and searching for a specific transponder code. It took the Phantom a few seconds to identify the location of his target about seventy-five miles ahead.

"Hit the juice." he ordered.

They both went to full dry thrust, staying about a hundred feet apart as the two aircraft entered supercruise. It didn't take long for them to close to visual range with the civilian Boeing 747 that the British Government had chartered to carry the spares, munitions and the ground crew needed for the aircraft. Harry eased in right underneath the tail, keeping half an eye on his mirror as Nadya tucked her Thunderchief right behind and underneath him.

They weren't sure how the Brazilians would react to a pair of armed mercenary aircraft flying through their airspace, so they decided not to risk it. The two pilots switched off all of their detectable systems and stayed in the radar area of the Boeing. For the thirteen-hundred miles across Brazil to the Bolivian border, they stayed on the tail of the big airliner.

Ten miles into Bolivia, Nadya snapped the Thunderchief over onto the starboard wingtip and broke out of formation with a single radio transmission;

" _I'm bored._ "

Harry sighed and hauled the Phantom after her. They had fuel to spare and the 747 needed to get down and unload basics like the boarding ladders before they'd be any use. A good fight would allow them to get a feeling of their aircraft, as, particularly, Nadya didn't have many hours on the Thunderchief.

* * *

Deprived of their USAF markings but still in the glossy green and brown Vietnam camouflage, the Thunderchief and the Phantom posed an impressive sight, rolling in onto the ramp at Viru Viru International Airport an hour after they had parted company with the Boeing. Taxiing off the runway, they turned onto the taxiway and rolled onto the stand, where, facing south-east towards the aircraft outside the terminal, the halted.

Quickly, the ground crew chocked the aircraft, and as the pilots released their cockpit canopies, attached the boarding ladders. An erk also climbed up to the Phantom's rear cockpit and unstrapped the bags carrying some of the basic kit Nadya and Harry had wanted available immediately before they dug the rest out of the Boeing.

Harry silently accepted a missive from one of the ground crew. Written in English from the National Executive Directorate was an order for two days rest to get over jet lag and settle down before a meeting and briefing prior to operations. He raised an eyebrow as the missive detailed the car he had been given, which he spotted parked not far away. A '71 Buick LeSabre Sedan with a seven-point-five litre V8 and a body about the size of a small cruise liner.

Ripping off the key that had been sellotaped to the missive, he walked over to the car, Nadya following him and raising an eyebrow as she look over their transport. A moment later, as rough as a truck engine but with a deep baritone burble, the car burst into life.

"Come on, in you get." Harry called, lowering the window.

"Okay, just coming." Nadya replied, grabbing her kit bag and throwing it in the back. Their holiday had begun.


End file.
